Words - read...and etched

One of the important tools of communication - e-mail. It's often stated that talking is a preferred mode of communication rather than writing for obvious reasons - a mail cannot set the tone and flow as effectively as voice communication.

True...very much true.

Yet in some instances e-mail wins hands-down as the most preferred mode for first-time communication. Why? Because written (well...typed in this case :)..) words have that personal touch....a dash of chemistry which perhaps cannot be supplemented by talk. As Jay sayz in his impersonal analysis of life "Anonyomity is not a hindarance to bonding"....which is so applicable through mails.

A mail from a cherished person spouting sweet-nothings, or a mail from a complete stranger expounding the vagaries of life....they say it all. But there are loopholes as well - people have a knack of reading between the words (selective reading/chunnel vision...) and complicating matters. You write to convey something, and the person reading it deciphers it in an altogether tangential fashion. Throw in anger and zappp....a total mismatch of wavelength - a relationship heading towards splitsville.

E-mails have fast replaced lenghty, personal letters. No more cardboard greetings; e-greetings have made their foray into the birthday market with a big bang. Like all old-fashioned people, I do regret the loss of communication through letters - words, read on paper, convey the much needed personal touch then any other e-media. At the same time, I cannot deny the advantages of e-mails as well.

Here's one such mail from Sree which I received quite some time back.....

One of the major problems with life is that people have to live it. We are all traveling in a boat in the river called time. We are taught by our parents to build a boat. Then we travel to places, meet other people who are traveling in the same river. Sometimes we make friends with them and most of the times, we just mind our own business and row our boat. We all get tired at some point of time rowing all alone and then we decide we wanted some help. We wanted motivation to go ahead in life…

That is a funny word, motivation… We all need motivation to live… :) Like the journey of life itself is not motivating enough. We all forget the bigger picture so easily… We all are here for a reason we all loose the reason in the reasons that the world pours on us from the birth. Reasons why boy’s should not cry, why girls should not climb trees, why we should not play, why we should learn, why we should marry someone our parents picks for us and so on… From birth to death, one listens to nothing but reasons of the world.

Talking about learning, I heard this story when I was in College. A wise school teacher asked the class why the kids want to learn. One guy stood up and said that he wanted to learn to become a doctor, another said ‘engineer’, another said ‘a scientist’, another wanted to go to US. No one wanted to be a teacher. The teacher was more upset for another thing. No one wanted to learn to know, to gain knowledge, to understand how the world works, understand God and ourselves. We are brought up with the reasoning that an engineer or doctor or someone with a professional degree is a superior person and that is what we all should do. Who becomes teachers then??? The ones who don’t get any other jobs??? Sad state of life isn’t it… Have we all learned something just for the sake of knowledge??? Learned something on our own for fun? If so, when was the last time…

Time is a never ending river. I started at one point in life and I reached here. I will be going some place else and then one day I’d leave this world. I at times get upset cause I feel I never achieved anything in life. I am not using my life correctly. Deep inside if you ask yourself, your heart may also say the same thing…

Smiles,
Sree

Neeldess to say, I loved the choice of words in this mail.......