Jeg var en af de eneste elever i college, der havde en grund til at gå til dueslaget ved enden af dagen, og det var for det meste på grund af at min mor aldrig har troet på email, Facebook, sms'er, eller mobiltelefoner. I det andre børn "BBMede" deres forældre, stod jeg bogstaveligt talt og ventede ved postkassen på at brevet hvori min mor skrev hvordan weekenden var gået skulle ankomme, hvilket var frustrerende da min bedstemor var på hospitalet, men jeg ventede bare på den lille hilsen skrevet i min mors kragetæer.
I was one of the only kids in college who had a reason to go to the P.O. box at the end of the day, and that was mainly because my mother has never believed in email, in Facebook, in texting or cell phones in general. And so while other kids were BBM-ing their parents, I was literally waiting by the mailbox to get a letter from home to see how the weekend had gone, which was a little frustrating when Grandma was in the hospital, but I was just looking for some sort of scribble, some unkempt cursive from my mother.
Så da jeg flyttede til New York efter college og blev slået hovedkulds ud i en depression gjorde jeg det eneste jeg det første som slog mig ind. Jeg skrev breve i stil med min mors til fremmede, og efterladte dem i bunkevis overalt i byen. I caféer og på biblioteker, ved FN, overalt. Jeg bloggede om disse breve og de dage hvor de viste sig nødvendige, og jeg gav et rimeligt skørt løfte på internettet: At hvis man bad mig om et hånd-skrevet brev, ville jeg skrive dig et, uden at stille spørgsmål. Natten over forvandledes min indbakke til banegård for hjertebrud -- en enlig mor i Sacramento, en pige fra landet i Kansas som blev mobbet, alle bad mig, en 22-årig pige som knap nok kendte sin egen baghave, om at skrive dem et kærestebrev og give dem en grund til at vente ved postkassen.
And so when I moved to New York City after college and got completely sucker-punched in the face by depression, I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I wrote those same kinds of letters that my mother had written me for strangers, and tucked them all throughout the city, dozens and dozens of them. I left them everywhere, in cafes and in libraries, at the U.N., everywhere. I blogged about those letters and the days when they were necessary, and I posed a kind of crazy promise to the Internet: that if you asked me for a hand-written letter, I would write you one, no questions asked. Overnight, my inbox morphed into this harbor of heartbreak -- a single mother in Sacramento, a girl being bullied in rural Kansas, all asking me, a 22-year-old girl who barely even knew her own coffee order, to write them a love letter and give them a reason to wait by the mailbox.
Og i dag står jeg bag en global organisation op-bakket af af disse postkassebesøg, ved hjælp af alle de måder vi kan drage nytte af sociale medier til at skrive og afsende breve til fremmede i nød, men frem for alt drives vi af kasser som denne, min trofaste kasse fyldt med beskeder fra hvem som helst, breve skrevet af fremmede, til fremmede, ikke fordi de nogensinde vil mødes og hygge sig over en kop kaffe, men fordi de har fundet hinanden ved hjælp af breve.
Well, today I fuel a global organization that is fueled by those trips to the mailbox, fueled by the ways in which we can harness social media like never before to write and mail strangers letters when they need them most, but most of all, fueled by crates of mail like this one, my trusty mail crate, filled with the scriptings of ordinary people, strangers writing letters to other strangers not because they're ever going to meet and laugh over a cup of coffee, but because they have found one another by way of letter-writing.
Men det der altid slår mig ved de her breve er, at de fleste af dem er skrevet af folk som aldrig selv har følt kærligheden fra et brev. De kunne ikke fortælle dig om ordene i deres egne kærlighedsbreve. Det er dem fra min generation, dem som er vokset op i en papirløs verden, hvor nogle af vores bedste samtaler foregik på en skærm. Vi har lært at dele vores smerter på Facebook, og vi bruger ikke mere end 140 tegn.
But, you know, the thing that always gets me about these letters is that most of them have been written by people that have never known themselves loved on a piece of paper. They could not tell you about the ink of their own love letters. They're the ones from my generation, the ones of us that have grown up into a world where everything is paperless, and where some of our best conversations have happened upon a screen. We have learned to diary our pain onto Facebook, and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less.
Men hvad nu hvis det nu ikke handler om effektivitet? I går var jeg med metroen sammen med min kasse, hvilket virkelig starter sammentaler, kan jeg godt sige jer, hvis i nogensinde har brug for en, så gå bare rundt men sådan en her. Og en mand stirrede bare på mig, og spurgte: "Jamen, hvorfor bruger du ikke bare internettet?" Og jeg tænkte bare, "Men hr., jeg er ikke nogen strateg, heller ikke en specialist. Jeg er bare en fortæller." Jeg kunne fortælle dig om en kvinde hvis mand lige var hjemvendt fra Afghanistan, hun havde svært ved at genoplive det med af have samtaler, så hun lægger små kærlighedsbreve rundt omkring i huset som en måde at sige, "Kom tilbage til mig. Find mig når du kan." Eller om en pige som har besluttet sig for at efterlade kærlighedsbreve på hendes kollegium i Dubuque, Iowa, og derefter for at opdage næste dag hvordan da hun går ud i gården og finder kærlighedsbreve hængende fra træer, gemt i buskene og på bænkene. Eller om manden, der ville gøre en ende på det hele, som brugte facebook til at sige farvel til venner og familie. I nat sover han trygt med en stak breve som denne, gemt under hovedpuden, skrevet af fremmede som da var der for ham.
But what if it's not about efficiency this time? I was on the subway yesterday with this mail crate, which is a conversation starter, let me tell you. If you ever need one, just carry one of these. (Laughter) And a man just stared at me, and he was like, "Well, why don't you use the Internet?" And I thought, "Well, sir, I am not a strategist, nor am I specialist. I am merely a storyteller." And so I could tell you about a woman whose husband has just come home from Afghanistan, and she is having a hard time unearthing this thing called conversation, and so she tucks love letters throughout the house as a way to say, "Come back to me. Find me when you can." Or a girl who decides that she is going to leave love letters around her campus in Dubuque, Iowa, only to find her efforts ripple-effected the next day when she walks out onto the quad and finds love letters hanging from the trees, tucked in the bushes and the benches. Or the man who decides that he is going to take his life, uses Facebook as a way to say goodbye to friends and family. Well, tonight he sleeps safely with a stack of letters just like this one tucked beneath his pillow, scripted by strangers who were there for him when.
Sådanne historier overbeviste mig at brevskrivning aldrig igen behøves at blive set ned på eller belært om effektivitet, fordi hun er nu en kunstform, alle dele af hende, underskriften, skriveriet, afsendingen, krusedullerne i marginerne. Den simple viden om at nogen ville sætte sig ned, finde et stykke papir frem og tænke på nogen til vejs ende, med en intention langt sværere at finde frem når browseren er åben eller når telefonen meddeler at vi har seks samtaler kørende på en gang, en kunstform som ikke bliver formindsket til et simpelt "bliv hurtigere", uanset hvor mange sociale medier vi tilslutter os. Vi holder os stadig nært disse breve, disse ord der taler højere end højt når vi forvandler papirer til lærreder for at sige de ting som vi har manglet at sige, de ord vi har manglet at skrive, til søstre til brødre, selv til fremmede, i alt for lang tid. Mange tak. (klapsalve)
These are the kinds of stories that convinced me that letter-writing will never again need to flip back her hair and talk about efficiency, because she is an art form now, all the parts of her, the signing, the scripting, the mailing, the doodles in the margins. The mere fact that somebody would even just sit down, pull out a piece of paper and think about someone the whole way through, with an intention that is so much harder to unearth when the browser is up and the iPhone is pinging and we've got six conversations rolling in at once, that is an art form that does not fall down to the Goliath of "get faster," no matter how many social networks we might join. We still clutch close these letters to our chest, to the words that speak louder than loud, when we turn pages into palettes to say the things that we have needed to say, the words that we have needed to write, to sisters and brothers and even to strangers, for far too long. Thank you. (Applause) (Applause)