And now for something completely slow
It’s National Handwriting Day.
The handwriting police race up to you, there is a screech of tires and the from the bull horn you hear: “Step away from the keyboard!”
Or at least that’s how I imagine it. But it really is National Handwriting Day. Handwriting may be a lost slow art. But even those who scrawl can enjoy the sensuality of pencil (in my case) or pen on paper.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I like my handwriting these days. And it’s getting better. It used to be appalling, so I won’t show you an example of that. Even I couldn’t read it. And the real reason for my previous obfuscating scrawl was that I was a nervous speller. Bad spelling was a source of keen embarrassment to me. I was even caned for not learning my spelling list as a schoolboy. It didn’t help. In fact it made me more nervous.
It’s easy to overcome bad spelling with software. And for me, the computer has improved my spelling as I now have the confidence to practice handwriting every day.
In France employers take handwriting seriously. They believe that you can make assumptions about people by the way they write. This maybe true, but like any test, be it Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, or any other system, the danger is to categorize and then only react to the label.
Handwriting does seem to be heritable. I see influences of my mother’s and father’s handwriting. In those days it was important to have an elegant hand. That was unless you were a doctor. I believe they had special illegibility classes for them in medical school.
My parents’ generation used to write, and calculate by hand. Handwriting mattered. It is a art, and like most art it’s a practice that improves over time. Handwriting has an immediacy that the keyboard doesn’t have. It’s authentic and expressive. Writing is drawing. It’s more somatically connected.
Even though having a handwriting day is probably a commercial idea, in these fast-paced times, receiving a handwritten letter or note can make a difference. It’s certainly a demonstration of slowing down.