What a find!
I never knew the beautiful antique box was a portable writing desk. Lifting the interior platform, I was delighted to find it full of letters to my mother’s great aunt, “Clicky," especially one written 154 years ago.
In letter dated June, 1870, Clicky's father, “JM” writes:
“As I look back over the last 70 years, back to the first appearance of 1800, to the time of stagecoaches, stout legs and strong arms, to the time when our homes were our factories, our parents the stockholders, and the strikes of those days were more sooner over and had a different effect from those of the present day. But those old firesides are fast becoming only a story and we have now to take their places, homes and conveniences, which they never dreamed of. And are we any happier or any better satisfied than they were? I do not think we are, or ever shall be satisfied on this earth...”
In 10 pages of elegant script, JM writes about the amazing technical achievements in his lifetime, but then in what seems like a decidedly contemporary twist, he asks: in our obsessive push for what’s better and faster, are we any happier or more satisfied than our ancestors?
What a marvelous thing to hold in my hand: the words of my great, great, grandfather wondering the same thing I do! Such is the power of a letter to cross time. To riff off Shakespeare, if all the world's a stage, it is not our human journeys that change, only the sets on the stage.
How wonderful that great aunt Clicky didn’t throw that letter away, nor did my mother, and neither will I.
The audience of the ethical will that you write to your loved ones won't throw your letter away either. Such is its enduring value.
Let me help you, or your clients, create a letter that crosses generations and time.
Susan
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