The Value Of Writing

I will write about writing today, that is, the benefit of it to the writer, if not the recipient of what is written. Haha You are lucky that this will not be another full fledged anti cell phone rant of mine, but it is sufficient to say now and below that cell phone chat is transitory and the written word is much longer lasting. Chat is here now and gone forever when the listener hangs up his cell phone. No matter how important or how insignificant (as 99% of cell talk is) those cell phone calls are, they are quickly gone forever.
In a way, writing is ever-lasting or could be because letters, E mails, any written word can be treasured and stored for others to see, read and re-read. Someone once remarked how tragic it was that those last phone calls the murdered at the World Trade Center made on September 11, 2001, went largely into thin air after they were made. The loved ones heard the last words but have not any way to see them again and again, to keep a piece of the person they lost forever on that day. Sure they treasure the words, btu it is not the same as having them in writing.
Written words are real and the paper on which they are written is immortal. When we write, as opposed to talking in a phone, we think much longer and harder before placing our words in the hand of others. They are the personal monuments we leave for others. Even my E mail is apart of me( Haha yes it reveals a certain insanity), and I wonder if I should save any of this mess. Well, I don't. But how happy I am to have found that diary my mom wrote when she was a child. It is as relevant to me in bringing her back to me as it was to her when she wrote it in her childhood. As is, I quickly delete my mail. So it is as worthless as those cell phone calls I hate so much.
I think that whatever we write is worthwhile in some way to somebody, but most of all to the writer him or herself. So writing E mail, letters, a book....anything... is also a kind of therapy for the writer. Haha Yes, when I rant about cell phones I probably need a therapist, but isn't my venting about rude cell phone users a kind of self therapy? ( No. I have not cured my self of my hatred yet for cell phones)
When we write we are reflective, forced to think before putting words to paper. This is a far more difficult and important task than is chatting on a phone and revealing our impulsive thoughts. I always feel more an individual when I write because being far more difficult than chatting, writing makes us think more and reflect more about ourselves as we do it. It's no wonder that writing coherently is the hardest intellectual skill man can undertake.
My observation of cell phone users says that talking all day on a cell phone requires very little intellect and effort and produces little of lasting value. I wonder why new ideas (not technology, but thoughts) appear far less frequently now and why they were so prevalent when almost all people wrote every day in one form or another.
Perhaps there is a correlation between the written word and the frequency of thought. Surely, today's communications are too easy and given too often to be as meaningful as those long letters people used to carefully write to each other in earlier generations. I am amazed at how little effort goes into the written communications I receive each day. Oh I appreciate them all, but rarely am I challenged to think deeply about something which I had previously ignored or given too little attention . It's because most people today write in a perfunctory way, the way they talk on a phone or face to face.
Maybe our educational systems also have been an accomplices with our amazing technology to injure communication and make too much of it sound like a cell phone chat one hears at a grocery store.
Sigh...whatever...I think communication would be better if people hung up their cell phones more often, dropped off chat lines and took the time to write more often.