Actually Writing a Post

We finally got our power back on last night. With the limitations on my computer usage (because everything was running on batteries), I wrote this post beforehand; on actual paper; with an actual pencil; using my own hand! Really! When you think about how much we click letters on a digital screen instead of using an actual writing instrument, it is a bit weird for those of us who remember a day when there were no digital screens (do any of you remember actually using punch cards? I do!). We used to call it "typing" when you actually hit the buttons on a keyboard using all ten fingers, but I cannot stoop so low as to refer to bouncing your thumbs on your phone screen as "typing".

It was quite a while ago that I last wrote out by hand anything this long; and that is sad. It caused me to ponder how many other things we have ceased to do because of our "technological conveniences" that we have become used to (it is amazing how many things come to mind because of a power outage!). I read recently about a class of graduating seniors who were thoroughly competent in computers and cell phones, but were completely unable to write out full sentences with a pen or pencil. They could text about 40 words a minute, but their penmanship was so poor that it looked like it was written by a 4 year old.

Most would say that there is nothing inherently better about transacting information from a keyboard over doing so with pen and paper, but is that correct? When we actually write something down, it causes us to think more about it. In fact, the very act of pausing because our hand is sore from writing has a "safe-guard" built into it: it causes us to stop and think about what we are writing. Wow! What would the internet comment sections look like if everyone had to pause and think about what he was saying!? What a true grace that is to be forced to consider the actual words we are using and weigh the ramifications of using them. What if we could all be blessed like that?