2021 - About Letters

 Missionaries, teachers and relatives were model annual letter writers. They would send out by mail, sea or air, in those long ago days.

Today we are well connected by whatsapp, email, telephone etc.

Photo from Google, a lovely envelop from Sibu 1939. What could be the contents of this letter?

Do we still have to write an annual letter to sum up our year? A kind of report card. It can be general, it can be very specific, and the choice is a wide one. 

Warren Buffet now 90 still writes annual letters.

The Reverend McDougall wrote many letters from Sarawak, which were compiled into a book, "Letters from Sarawak". It is a book I haven't read.

At school I read many books by Pearl S. Buck, I was most taken by "Letter from Peking" and I was to read the book several times over the years, and each time I read it, the novel seems different as I have different opinions about China, the USA, love, filial piety and Chinese roots as I age.

In secondary school we were encouraged to write in English and have pen pals. I had two pen pals I corresponded with but we lost touch. Our English teachers even encouraged us to read our pen pals' letters in the class. And then, it was fun waiting for the post man to drop mails in our letter box at Brooke Drive. I remember him riding a bicycle. He wore a brown uniform.

And of course we waited anxiously for Mr. Chong Chung Sing or Mr. Wong Kiing Nung of the Methodist Secondary School to bring the mail to the school in the mid afternoon. During RECESS, they were the most popular guys, with us clamouring for our mails. I used to imagine (with sadness in the heart) some boys and girls who never received letters in their lives.

And then of course there were students in the school who secretly put love letters in the bicycle bags of their chosen ones. Those were school day stories about letters.

And then I started to realise that in 2021, during the Pandemic, we have all become very traumatized by Covid 19. We became incoherent at times, we could not put words down, and worst of all we could not pen a good letter. We respond to questions, sometimes angrily, sometimes very ridiculously. We forget to write gracious words to relatives and friends, and our dearest family members. Worst of all, we feign busyness and forget to reply messages or letters.

Some governments find postal services very essential but challenging during the Pandemic. What would happen to millions of letters not delivered during the Pandemic 2020-2021?

Are we  ourselves leaving gracious letters for our future generations?

It is good to "drop a line" for someone we have met, we have known for years. It may mean the world to them.

But may be it is still good to write an annual letter to tell others about our year. 2021 has gone but we can still recap a little.