How to fall in love with anyone

If you want to fall in love, all you need to do is write a letter.

The paper doesn’t matter. Hell, it can be written on a cereal box for all I care.

All that matters is that you write it. And that you send it.

Have you ever received a love letter? To see the mark of another’s hands on the page is a kind of miracle. It is the mark of humanity. As we all know, attention is the most valuable of gems. To write a letter is to give a dozen diamond rings.

We all want, more than anything, to be seen. To write is to see— and see clearly. It is togetherness beyond the physical. The written word has an honesty hard to come by beyond the page. We all know the truth is easier said than written.

Have you ever written a letter?

Not a birthday card. Not a note. An actual letter.

It hurts your hand. You have to stop and shake out your wrist. Your handwriting becomes devastatingly sloppy. Your words turn circles and run together.

But you don’t care.

Or maybe you care too much. Because there is no pain quite as wonderful as the soreness resulting from the labor of love.

Love.

That’s what writing a letter is, isn’t it? It is the warm, golden goo of your heart welling up and spilling down onto a waiting page. Your chest grows warm the way it does after a glass of wine. Yet there is a tasting note more sweet and indescribable than the finest Chablis.

Nowadays, nobody expects to receive a letter.

Our time and attention are spread too thin, and letters are not flashy. Writing does not dull the senses and lull you into a delightful cocoon of complacency. Writing is often painful, awkward, and difficult. It forces you into the present— the last place most of us wish to visit. But, more than that, writing requires you to give away your time to someone else, and we as a species are more miserly than we would like to admit.

It can feel like your words are not good enough. Rarely can mere sentences capture the technicolor feeling in our hearts. We say that expressing our imperfect thoughts would be shameful and selfish. Yet to yank our hands away in fear and insecurity is the most conceited act we can do. It is a gift to give yourself— blatantly and wildly imperfect— over to another.

After all, a farmer still plants seeds in a dry year. Any harvest is better than none at all.

Can I be frank?

You need to get over yourself.

You will (probably) never publish your letters in a literary magazine. And most people’s lives never make it into a memoir. You are not writing to get credit. You are writing for love. You are writing because the words are kicking and screaming and demanding to be written.

Can I be honest for a second?

Most letters are incredibly dull. They are repetitive and almost always cliché.

But let me tell you a secret— about letters and life:

It doesn’t matter what you do or how it turned out. All that matters is doing it at all.

So, now, go forth and write a letter.

I dare you not to fall in love.