I started sending Christmas cards again a few years ago. I also started celebrating my birthday again. Is it related? Probably. I stopped celebrating and sending cards when my health started going downhill. I pulled back from the world, trying to figure out what the hell was wrong. When my life snapped back into focus, health crisis over and PTSD starting to go into remission, I could finally start making decisions on how to have a meaningful social life. Meaningful to me, personally, rather than running on old programming. Today, after oscillating between a huge social network (of, mostly, fellow students) and then barely seeing two people a year, I’ve now swung back and have struck a balance that’s sustainable.
Sustainability, that word was fashionable for quite a while. Sustainability this, sustainability that. Especially in relation to “the environment”. What they meant was: “Thou shalt not breathe too deeply lest you produce too much (any) CO2.” Don’t consume. Don’t move. Don’t live. They didn’t mean sustainable to you, in your personal life. And they certainly didn’t mean your personal environment. But what is “the” environment if not a superset of overlapping environments, Venn diagrams of environments, overlapping and crossing each other, but delineating at the same time? It’s all fractal in nature, and if you can’t have a personal environment, one on which you decide where the boundaries are, then there cannot be an overarching, all encompassing super-environment either. The basic building block is an environment of one person. You build up from there. So, you start small. You look around and figure out where your personal environment starts and ends. Who are in your circle? Who do you like? Who do you enjoy spending time with? Who do you (secretly) dislike and would rather not speak too often, or not at all if you were completely honest with yourself? What is sustainable to you? That’s where I started, after my personal world collapsed and I started to rebuild it. And I decided who I very much liked being friends with, and what effort is sustainable to me to maintain the friendship well. Celebrating my birthday, I can and want to do that. Sending out Christmas cards, yes! And going out for dinner or cups of coffee or tea, with one or two good friends at a time and our partners. That I enjoy. I’ve set my own bar for my life. Others may need more, or less. That’s fine. I myself have swung back and forth on this, as my old programming demanded that I count my friends, collect as many as possible and keep everybody happy. I was sending out smiley faces non stop via online media, and I ran back and forth doing activities with fellow students but actually hanging out with people and having a good meaningful talk? That was rare. (And the people who I found that kind of connection with are my friends to this day.) I replied to every text with a smiley face, but I kinda already knew that this wasn’t connecting, not really.
I like to type my thoughts into a device, yes. I like to write software, behind my computer, in a safe bubble of quiet time. I used to mix that up with friendships. Typing on a screen is just that, typing. It’s not a real connection to another person, it’s just a mechanical mirror. Beyond being a way to set up an appointment or exchange some information for later discussion, it sometimes seems to me that our digital age mostly provides a way to interact with yourself. This blog is really nothing more than a way for me to organize my thoughts, for my own benefit. And the same goes for whoever punches keys in response to the bunch of letters that appear on their screen. They’re not replying to you. They’re replying to an imaginary image of you, in their heads, evoked by the letters on the screen. They’re replying to a low resolution image of you, and most of what they see is however they interpret your typed words, based on their personal history. It’s disconnected from your presence. Yes, you can sometimes sense things about the other person, even if you only read their typed text, you can sense when things are off and sometimes it’s easier because you have time to gather your thoughts. It seems like I’m contradicting myself here. But it’s not. Typed text or digital content is not the same, not the same at all, as talking in person. Talking by phone or video call is a good way to stay in touch overseas, but nothing beats seeing someone in person.
Similarly, I don’t believe anymore that a digital Christmas card is a card. It’s not. It’s a Christmas image, it’s non physical and therefore different and, dare I say it, less meaningful in my opinion. Feel free to disagree. You haven’t received anything, the word receiving isn’t even correct. Yes, the other person thought of you, or you of them. But it’s incomplete. It’s a motion that was thought of, but not quite executed.
This, and probably some other reasons I’m not aware of, is why I send out physical Christmas cards every year now. Yes, it takes some time and a little effort to buy them, write and send. But maybe that’s what makes it worthwhile. Something that doesn’t cost anything isn’t worth much either. Two years ago and last year, I drew and printed them myself. I admit I haven’t done that this year. I guess that I could do even “better” if I did that again. But life isn’t a match, or a contest. I’m okay with buying a box of cards this year. The glass is half full. It makes me feel better when I do these things the way I’m doing them now.
We already received the first early Christmas card here yesterday. (I’m sure they sent it early because the postal network here is very unreliable and even moreso in December. Last year, delivery of Christmas cards was delayed up to a month, cards that were sent the week before Christmas arrived at the end of January…) I very much enjoyed receiving that first card. It feels like we, the physical card senders, are keeping up a tradition that’s all but lost now. Perhaps more people will rediscover that sending or receiving a physical card and putting it on display in your home feels more real than the brief one-time dopamine hit an animated image gives you.