Leave your footprint – permanence in a fast-paced world
ditch the Notes app, girl. and yeah - I got a tattoo about this.
I recently had a conversation with a friend regarding our increased awareness of a new phenomenon in the “digital age.” There is this really interesting juxtaposition surrounding permanence in our society: people say that “the internet is forever,” and that you should beware of the things you post online due to their tendency to stick around like that piece of gum on the bottom of your new shoes. In contrast, it seems that there are far fewer permanent artifacts in our day in age than ever before. As someone who has always had an affinity for sentimental relics, I naturally have a box of every handwritten note, card, letter, or postcard that I have received between 2013 and now. Sometimes, I find myself flipping through these papers; the Valentine’s Day cards from ex-boyfriends, “Congratulations!” cards from relatives who sent lots of “x’s” and “o’s” in response to my high school, college, and graduate school graduations, and “thank you” notes from every kind of occasion. I don’t leaf through these for any particular reason – sometimes it is simply comforting to read the words of people who love you (or loved you… past tense). As the years have gone on, however, the volume of handwritten papers I have received has been on a steep decline. This isn’t to shame the people in my life for depriving me; trust me, it’s been a while since I ventured to the post office to buy a book of stamps. It just got me thinking: if this box is what I leave behind when I am gone, is this all people will have to remember me by?
Now, you are probably thinking I am being existential, dramatic, and potentially narcissistic, but what I am getting at is that I have started to feel this dread that if I don’t send cards to my best friends, if I don’t journal my deepest thoughts and feelings, it is almost as if those thoughts and feelings didn’t exist in the first place. Hence why I started this Substack… oops.
I don’t really have any sort of point here. I really just needed a space to reflect and put this thought out into the world. If you are reading this and find yourself experiencing the random urge to scribble on some stationary, lick an envelope, and send it to a pal across the country, I’d like to think I have done my duty. If all you have the energy to do is jot a few words down in that empty journal next to your bed that you bought months ago, that will suffice as well. While technology has brought us so many gifts and has provided us with the ability to instantaneously reconnect with our loved ones near and far, it has robbed us of the little joys that come along with hand cramps, overpriced books of stamps, and neatly addressed envelopes.
Your thoughts and words matter; don’t leave the world hanging by never breathing them (or, rather, scribbling them) into existence. Leave your mark, litter your journals and the mailboxes of your friends, life is too short to leave things unspoken.
Did you know that 20% of the energy we take in is used by our brain? That we remember/retain 10% of what we read? 20% of what we hear. 30% of what we see. 50% of what we see AND hear. 90% of what we do!!! Here’s to the many and complex ways in which the footprint we leave here on earth is an indelible mark!