"People come and people go
Movin' fast and movin' slow
I'm in a crowd and yet I'm all alone"
These are lyrics from a 1960s song that spoke of feeling disconnected from things that once or still matter to us. How "the crowd" and our worlds seem to constantly change, leaving us to, as Darwin implied, "Adapt or Die".
It also reflects how isolated some older people have become. Technology rules the world, and they're expected to keep up. No one adds "...or perish" to that, for it would be mean, but it's exactly what I see in the faces of some of my older relatives.
That was driven home this past holiday season by the simplest of things: holiday cards.
We used to get over a hundred seasonal cards in the mail each year. Some contained summaries of the past year, or were an array of pictures from significant moments the sender wanted us to know about. They often elicited phone calls and conversions for catching up, and intentions to get together some day soon. At home, we would run strings across a living room wall to suspend them as part of holiday decoration, but also to remember the breadth of family and friends in our lives.
That's all but gone now. The digital age that isolates us has resulted in fewer cards and greater emails with cutesy GIFs and memes. Escalating postage costs in the USA have driven the expense beyond what seniors on fixed incomes can afford. One ounce envelopes cost 78 cents to mail today. Thirty years ago, it was less than half; thirty-tow cents. And sixty-five years ago, four cents. The cost of holiday cards themselves have also risen proportionately.
For many, it's still worth the expense, if for no other reason than to feel a card in your hands. Run your fingers over embossed lettering, glitter, and other textures. Even the smell of new cardstock can take us back to the warm memories of when the first card arrived each year. How anxious we were to open it. Feel it's message envelop us its intended love and reminiscions before it joined the others on a table, in a bowl, or if it came to our house, on a string.
We received fourteen cards this year. They had the same impact holiday cards always have, only now there are other thoughts they bring beyond how people are doing, or what's changed in their lives. We think about the cost and effort the person put in to send an actual card, and whisper a thank you.
We also open our device to see if more holiday greeting emails or social media posts have arrived, and check the junk and spam folders in case the algorithms sent them there. We open the spreadsheet we keep to compare addresses, wondering about the people we didn't hear from. What are they up to? Are they well?
And the we phone them if we have a number. Message or email them if we don't. Let them know that a card or message is fun, but more importantly, that we still care, even if a seasonal card no longer grazes the pads of our fingers.