Before "Seen" Ruined the Beautiful Inconvenience of Waiting

 Love letters were a traditional means of communicating with lovers and crushes back in the years when very few people owned mobile phones, and in instances when such phones were restricted, like in high school.

Do high schoolers still write, send and receive love letters?

During my high-school years, almost 10 years ago, they were so common. They were the best years of anticipating a beautiful experience, before smartphones became common and kinda ruined that.

We couldn't wait for school functions like music festivals, games and symposiums. We knew that whichever group went to represent the school would come back with loads of letters received from the boys' schools.

The beauty of it was that they would come and start reading the addresses out loud:

"For Ann Shaniz, from Brayo (Meru School)."

And the whole class would cheer. Of course, everyone would then follow the receiver and surround her, curious to know the contents of the decorated letter infused with "kiss before you open."

The owner of the letter would then have to wait for another function to reply if she was pleased with what she had read, and perhaps even meet Brayo if she was lucky enough to go out.

The experience didn't end there.

When schools were closed and your strict mum or dad wouldn't allow you to own even a katululu phone, communicating with your crush would either be through your friend's phone (we used to write phone numbers in a book) or you would simply attend a random event hoping to magically meet them.

Oh, those days.

There were no complications. That was the only way. And the moments of anticipation, hope, fantasising and missing each other were always genuine and beautiful.

Today's experience is almost the exact opposite. Almost everyone, including high schoolers, has a smartphone and access to the internet. No more love letters. No more of that miraculous anticipation.

The experience has been replaced with insecurities and conflicts.

"Ooh, they're online and not talking to me."

"Ooh, their phone is going through and they aren't picking my calls."

"Ooh, they are not calling me."

And other endless worries. And trust me, the insecurities are valid and genuine.

We actually have the capacity to communicate as often as we want. We are not waiting for months to do that. 

And yes, crucify me or not.

In some ways, I think love and friendships were more genuinely happy back then, when there were almost zero expectations.

There was also less opportunity to constantly monitor each other's availability, whereabouts and responsiveness. You couldn't easily tell whether someone was online, whether they had seen your message, or why they had taken two hours or weeks to reply.

You simply waited.

I now wonder whether the constant access we have to one another has introduced a different kind of pressure into our relationships and friendships.

We expect instant replies. We expect calls to be picked. We notice when someone is online. We know when someone has seen our message. We can reach each other almost whenever we want.

And perhaps, somewhere along the way, we lost the beauty of simply waiting.

So, should we go back to love letters? No. I don't think we can.

But sometimes I miss a time when you could spend weeks wondering whether someone was thinking about you, without checking their last seen, online status or wondering why they had read your message and chosen not to reply.

Maybe we didn't have better technology back then. But we just had better reasons to wait.

Oh, those days.