There is this long-standing belief that using a pen, and by extension writing itself, is somehow an anachronistic practice. That the world should be moved only into the digital space. We at Inkstable don’t agree with this premise and, in fact, rebuke it. So much of our interactions should be in the physical, versus the digital, world and we happily fight the good fight to ensure this to be true in our daily practices.
One way we do this is through letter writing. This, for many, has been replaced by the more expedient (and admittedly convenient) email. But there is something noble and gentlemanly about taking a moment to appreciate the recipient enough to want to sit down, put pen to paper, and write to them.
Someone once said that being a gentleman is being considerate of other people and putting good manners into practice. It’s a noble pursuit to put others first, especially when it can, undoubtedly, make their day brighter by getting a piece of mail. It lets them know you think more highly of them than a simple text. It positions them as the priority in your daily life and for that, one begins to truly feel like they did a good deed for the day.
We have seemed to have outsourced good manners for convenience sake. We text “happy birthday” instead of sending a card. We send a few dollars on Venmo instead of a real, thoughtful birthday gift. We, as a society, look for the road most traveled instead of taking a moment and thinking about what matters most: relationships.
As our world continues to be more and more digitized and with no end in sight, it’s important to prioritize these moments of good manners in an effort to remind others that we’re a lot more than a handful of emojis and “likes” on a screen, but we’re real people who care about one another, even when we’re miles away.
