Snail mail, fountain pens

As a way to get thoughts into comprehensible form, I like to write snail mail. It's like magic. I can't type nearly as well as I can compose when I write. As a way to get creative juices flowing, Eric enjoys calligraphy and fountain pens. Why are we phasing out the more meaningful for the more convenient? It's faster and messier to write with a pencil than with a fountain pen, and it's faster yet to type. But how much can words on a computer screen really express?

Maybe as we rely more on technology, our lives become more shallow. For how can you live life as fully if you skim the surface, never pausing to dive into the joys and sorrows? Perhaps, by trying to be more efficient and doing more things, we see less of everything we do. It was like that for my junior year. There was so much in those AP classes, I wish I had more time to spend on each one, but there is a limited amount of time and only so much you can do. How often in our lives do we stop? I read in an article that our generation is losing the ability to contemplate. How true, how true. The article also says that because we lose the ability to look into ourselves and solve problems that way, we are more susceptible to mental disease and drug abuse, because we don't have a way to cope. Or maybe video games? TV? Anything mindless?

We need that time at the park, that time of quiet, the time of music, or self-expression, of self-exploration. We need to slow down, maybe even stop, to think. We need fountain pens and snail mail.