Postcards from Heaven: How writing a postcard saves your sanity, friendships, and maybe your life

Not too long ago during a trip to London, I was startled by the absence of racks of postcards in touristy places. Then it dawned on me: Who wants the hassle of writing and sending — not to mention paying for — a postcard when you can post a selfie in front of a known monument on Instagram or Facebook? Right?

Wrong! Sending postcards is a life-affirming experience. Not only are postcards a super effective way to express love and intimacy, but they also allow you to reflect on your life and journey, strengthen your relationships — maybe even repair a frayed one — and leave a long-lasting memory. Can you say the same about a selfie posted on Instagram?

How does a postcard shape your journey?

Postcards are all about showing that you care, even when you’re having the time of your life in an exotic destination. Let’s start with the act of buying the card. Selecting the perfect postcard for a friend, a parent, or a lover from amongst hundreds is not easy. As you go through rack after rack — flipping through iconic sights photographed from different angles, at different times of the day and night — you think about potential recipients and their tastes. The process becomes a test of how well you know them. It’s also a good opportunity to select a card for someone you haven’t seen in a while, or someone you had a falling out with. After all, postcards don’t get sent to “spam” files.

Next, you look for a place to write. I have vivid memories of writing postcards while lingering over a cup of café au lait on a rickety table at a dingy cafe. It allowed me to escape my loneliness and my tiny, cramped hotel room; warm up; and soak up the local scene as I reflected on my day. Even more importantly, I gave my feet — which were throbbing from walking all day — a respite. As I wrote, I sorted through everything I had seen and shared only the parts pertinent to my intended recipient, telling my father about a good meal and my mother about a bargain shirt. Those cafés are now gone, but they still live in my memory. Can you remember where you were when you wrote that text to your partner?

Then there’s the most important part: what you write. A postcard is not a letter. You have limited space. It isn’t quite private either. So you need to be careful. No raunchy jokes, no stories of secret rendezvous (unless they’re written in code). There’s no going back, either. Crossing out words wastes space and looks messy. Before you even start writing, you need to plan how to use every millimeter of space to cram in as much as possible. Every word counts. And it must convey emotions.

A little drawing — a heart, a flower, a bee — that means something to the recipient goes a lot further than picking an emoji. A drawing is personal, it’s from your own hand. Once, I found a postcard written in a spiral: “My darling, I miss you, I miss you, I miss you… ” It was written in neat masculine handwriting and dated 17 February 1917. I can picture a young man, a newly minted soldier perhaps, in a train station café, writing to a sweetheart he had just left. I wonder if they ever met again.

Why Postcards in the electronic age?

In my life, I have written zillions of texts and emails. They all have served their purpose: expediting the exchange of information. But not a single one of them could ever take the place of a postcard. Marshall McLuhan was right: the medium is the message.

Granted, postcards don’t provide the instant gratification of your friends’ obligatory “like” on your chosen social media platform. But they can give you longer-term satisfaction. When my mother was lost to the world with Alzheimer’s and no longer knew who she was, I took her to the nursing home. While packing up her things, I found a bag filled with cards, including postcards I had sent her. The fact that she’d kept those cards through multiple moves and many years warmed my heart.