The Forgotten Art of Writing

Last week I was watching "Notes on a Scandal". Judi Dench's character maintains a journal in that. While watching the movie I recalled the time when I used to maintain a diary. I used to frequently jot down my thoughts and experiences in the diary. Every year began with the resolution to maintain a proper diary. This resolution used to feverishly pursued for the first week or month. After that occasional jottings would be made. By mid year the diary would be forgotten entirely.

Somewhere down the line I gave up on this resolution totally. Seeing the movie motivated me to start with this practice. Now human tendency is to excel in whatever they do. This did not leave me alone. Now that I had decided to note down atleast the memorable events of my life I could not decide on where to start. Which event should I keep as the landmark? And will I recollect all the details properly?? After a lot of thought I decided on the starting point. I successfully finished 2 pages. While taking a break I tried to list what all I will include and I was overwhelmed by the number of events I wanted documented. Oh my God, when will I ever finish it all? The diary writing became a daunting task.

To ease the problem I decided to phase it out and interspersed my journal writing with other activities. While writing another thought struck me - when was the last time I wrote a letter? As was expected I had no idea. Now with the advent of internet, email and countless number of messengers where do we have the need to write letters and send them by mail? All I do is type a hurried email or even better get my relatives and friends online and chat with them. I guess the days of the letters are gone. What I keep questioning myself now is whether the future generation will learn to write or will they start typing from their kindergarden days??? Any thoughts?