Staying Open

Maybe you don't know what it's like.

I've entered Month 11 of my postal project and it's a comfortable routine now. I have routine correspondence with a few fellow letter-writers, and I send and receive postcards at regular intervals with many more. I've worked through the wishing that everyone would write back, and let it be okay that most don't.

I kind of feel like this is huge. I live in a world of mandatory reciprocation, a very, very transactional world. I give a clerk money, she bags my purchases. You slide your card in, your gas tank gets filled. Even in nature: I water you, you bloom. I feed you, you return to my garden.

It takes effort of a different kind to give without expecting anything back, and maybe that's the underlying point of my project - to teach myself how. It hasn't just been to fill a basket with postcards from all over, or fill a box with letters. There's more to it - a depth I haven't touched yet - beyond the sending of tangible post.

For now, I'm thinking it's this: take the experience of sending mail without expectation and turn it into a lifetime of openly giving. And then to keep giving, to never stop giving, no matter what.

It'll take some practice.