I wrote this letter to my niece’s husband, who lives in Vienna, Austria, almost five years ago. I believe these words are perhaps more meaningful today than they were even then.
From Columbus, Indiana on September 10, 2013…
Dear Martin,
I hope this letter finds you and Kristen well, that your summer has been enjoyable and productive, and your fall season will be its equal. It struck me today that the art of letter writing appears to be lost so I have decided to take it upon myself to resurrect the art, or at least some reasonable facsimile. For the sake of expediency, I have decided to put my pen aside and use the keyboard instead. I am further setting aside the traditional means of letter writing by delivering this electronically rather than using envelope and postage stamp. I do so under the guise that rather than burning fossil fuels to run to the post office, I am preserving our natural resources by taking the easy way out. I have decided that you should be its recipient as it is a bit more difficult for you to tell me to my face that I am crazy or otherwise off my rocker, although I am looking forward to your next visit and the opportunity to have a beer together.
I was recently reading a collection of correspondence from Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century American author, and a few sentences to his sister on October 27, 1837, struck me as apropos. In it he wrote –
“…letter writing too often degenerates into a communing of facts, & not of truths; of other men’s deeds, & not our thoughts. What are the convulsions of a planet compared with the emotions of the soul? Or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened by a ray?”
So at the risk of being philosophical, which I often do, I have decided to share a few thoughts with you. Not a communing of the facts as Thoreau pointed out, although mine may not be truths in the broadest sense, even though they may feel like it to me. It is my hope that you will find a kernel of wisdom in the lines that follow and it will cause meaningful thoughts to rise up within you. These words are not meant in any way to provoke, in its sharpest sense, but instead to prod our thoughts to the surface while leading us to be more introspective about life on the planet and among humanity.
Recently, I read the following quote from Holmes Rolston III, a Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University –
“Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live.”
All of us, me included, have no concept of the number of species that are lost to extinction that we never knew even existed. This should be equally as sad to us as to hear of a known species that no longer exists. All too often these extinctions occur as a result of the impacts of humans on the habitat that we share together. As we continue down this path of destruction and more species are lost, when will the day come that we wake up and realize that we are destroying our own habitat and we may be next on the list for extinction? We do not live in a vacuum, able to go on our merry way, ignorant that our habits as individuals and as a species can have a negative or positive impact, be it right outside our back door or thousands of miles away. Our sun may burn out in a few billion years but continuing down the wrong path may make this event irrelevant to the human species. Just as one doesn’t live in the same house with another person and not share a common bond, we are all bonded together as inhabitants of this planet – plant and animal. We should make every effort to keep the house clean, for there will be future owners.
Until next time, Martin, with love and regards,
John
