What it means to have a pen pal
The only association I have with the term “pen pal” is a very long lasting relationship with a person with whom you’ve never met, whom you only know from the pictures he sent you, his handwriting, and things he’s written you. Both of you are planning to meet each other some day, have a picnic or a barbecue, or just talk, but that day is still oh-so-far-away. Perhaps one day you meet; and perhaps you don’t.
Either way, you respect each other for all the warm letters you’ve written to each-other, for that wonderful feeling you get when the postman delivers that letter, with your name written on it in that handwriting you know so well, and all the time you spent writing a reply of your own. You cherish your pen pal, and when you get a letter, you start feeling through the envelope to see how thick it is, because you want it to be very long and very intriguing, and as you open it you feel excitement because someone cherishes you back so much that they’ve written such a large essay, knowing full well that the only pairs of eyes that would read it would be yours.
And who knows… maybe one day your innocent scribbling turns to something more than being pen pals. Maybe you meet, maybe you become friends; maybe you become lovers. But who is to know? The indeterminacy of your relationship is what makes it so exciting and worthwhile. In fact, the indeterminacy of all things is what makes them exciting. When you set out to read a new book, you have no idea what is going to happen next – that is why you read it all the way to the end. If someone revealed the plot to you before you even began – would you bother reading the book? If you would, do you think you would enjoy it as much as you would had you not known anything about the plot? Certainly not! There’s a reason why revealing plot details is called spoiling it – because it spoils the pleasure of discovering it as you go.
Similarly, you can spoil many things in your life, if you remove the indeterminacy element. Let me make this clear, however. By indeterminacy I do not mean the impossibility of predicting – by any means – the end of things in a given context; I mean by this only the fact that you yourself, as you are, cannot immediately tell what is going to happen next. When you start reading the book, you cannot say what the climax will be; when you start solving a difficult mathematical problem, you cannot say what the result will be; when you start a pen friendship, you cannot tell how it will end. Each of these you will discover as you go.
You could, for example, spoil your pen friendship if you set out looking for a pen pal by announcing that you want it to end in romantic love; or by meeting on a barbecue. In principle, this would be the same as saying that your pen friendship would end in you tearing up one of the letters of your (former) pen pal, and replying with a letter with “GET OUT OF MY LIFE” written in capitals across the whole page (although people are unlikely to say that).
How can you possibly tell either of these things? How can you know that you will fall in love with a person whom you chose as your pen pal, considering you’ve never even met him? Or, how can you know that you will meet at a barbecue – what if you find that you truly hate that person you’ve chosen to correspond with, and don’t want to see him? By the same principle you cannot tell that you will hate him either.
Interestingly enough, I’m not just saying that to waste space and time. People actually do these things! In the last several months, I’ve become a member at some find-a-pen-pal sites, because I really wanted a pen pal to write to. What did I find? Proclamations of love to nobody in particular, promises of interesting discussion to everyone who writes, and adverts saying “I want to talk about that and nothing else, and I want to do it with a pen pal.” Just today I found a site which offered hundreds of categories representing topics I’d like to discuss with my would-be pen pal. Among others, there were categories like “pets”, “hiking”, “cycling”, “comedy”, etc.
Whoever wants a pen pal that would talk only about pets? Goodness, whoever can write a letter about pets to a person he doesn’t even know? Certainly, a discussion can briefly turn to pets in any kind of relationship, but I’m having a hard time imagining a relationship based solely on the discussion of pets. The only counterexample would be if someone is in pet business, and wants to talk business with some other person who is in the same business – but then he doesn’t go about looking for a pen pal, does he?
Naturally, everyone would like to find a pen pal who has similar interests. This reduces the possibility of an unsuccessful relationship, and saves time. Even I want a pen pal who likes to discuss philosophical issues, who likes to think, who loves life, etc. and not someone who isn’t capable of at least capitalizing the first letter of a sentence, if that particular person has shown the ability to form a sentence in the first place (oh yes, there are those who can’t even do that, yet they still seek pen pals). But that doesn’t guarantee 100% that I’ll be interested in having the first chap who comes along writing a letter resembling a treatise on Kant as a pen pal. In fact, if I decided to write back, it would most likely be only to tell him how wrong he is to think he is a thinking individual who loves life while praising Kant.
However, in my view, even searching for pen pals by interest is a blunder. Not such that it might suck the pleasure out of a relationship, but it can get a relationship to a false start more often than usual. Say somebody finds my interests summed up somewhere in a database I don’t know anything about. Now what? Will he write me a letter saying “Hey, I saw you like computer games, perhaps we can talk about that and more?” Is he then really writing to me about computer games because he is interested in many of the things from the list he found, or because he is so into the computer gaming world he doesn’t know about anything else in life? Or is he just writing to me about what I’m interested in because he is so desperate for a relationship of some kind, even if he isn’t interested in the same subject at all (that too happens from time to time)?
I’m not interested in anyone enacting a relationship with me only to force a conversation with me about what I like doing. I’d rather they surprise me by how much they have found out about me when I haven’t said much yet, and see that I am trying to do the same. I’d rather they conversed with me because it gives them pleasure, not because they think it is something we should talk about because we share that particular interest.
Relationships in which both people knew each other’s interests since before the relationship existed is bound to fail, or be torturous. Knowing these things about a person you wish to get to know is like reading a plot summary for a potentially good book, before beginning to read it – it’s a spoiler.
Still it gives people safety to know that only those people will contact them who agree with them on a particular subject. It is, perhaps, a matter of vanity and of not wanting to have their views challenged by others. Whatever it is, it is not as fulfilling as having struggled hard to find just the kind of pen friend they wanted. It is the same as finding a lover by means of a newspaper ad. Can a few printed letters on a paper truly spark love as strong as the one that was fought for? Can you ever truly fall in love with someone who just came to you and said “I really liked that ad in the newspapers. I think I could love you if it’s true”? I don’t think so.
Having a pen pal is similar to having a friend or a lover. They are people whose letters make you feel warm and valued, and people whose insight you value yourself. It is more than a simple question-answer way of communication. When you read his letter, it triggers another thought in you which you wish to communicate to him. And then your letter triggers another thought in him. Or something happened, good or bad, and you wish to share it with someone. It can sometimes be a relationship more intimate than romantic love, because when you are writing a letter you think thoroughly about what you want to write, and only then you write it. When you talk to someone, you might remember you’ve forgotten to mention something which could be important. You can’t put that in a post script, can you?
