Sometimes we are tempted to think our grandparents knew all the secrets we haven’t figured out yet.  So we bestow on them reverence, as though they had an understanding which surpassed our own.  We neglect to account for the fact that when our grandparents knew it, it wasn’t a secret yet.

This past summer I did something I hadn’t done in a long time.  Truth be told, I may have never done it at all.  I wrote letters, actual letters, letters which bore my own chicken scratches, that were sealed in an envelope, which was plastered with a stamp and then sent to roam half the world and half its people till it found the one I meant it for, in whom I hoped it may find approval.

The technology is centuries old and as amazing now as it was then, if you want to take the time to think about it.

The real marvel, however, the most pertinent thing which escapes us and our technology of today, is what takes place once the letter finds the addressee.  Opening it, they find a little part of whoever it was that sent it.  For the sender this part had aged for several days and had gotten old, but half way around the world this old self becomes new again in the eyes of another.  For a moment, two different versions of ourselves exist in two different places at the exact same time.

Somehow in all the world, a letter found them, and my old self was made new again and got a second chance to do some good.  I hope it did.

This has been replaced by the celebrated technology of today, which gives us instead the remarkable ability to be the same old ass in two different places at the exact same time.