Noteworthy Monday

I've decided to try a new system for blogging, to help me organize and share all the wonderful words, thoughts, music, images, and experiences that are a daily part of my life.  Sunday through Thursday (I do still need to live my life away from the internet on the weekends!) I will be posting something within a particular theme for that day of the week.  Mondays are going to be dedicated to noteworthy correspondence -messages written by one person specifically for another.

I love a well thought out letter.  Words written on paper that you can hold, and save, and carry with you.  Words that are more than just a fleeting sound...instead becoming something tangible, relivable, remembered.   Words sent to persuade, to apologize, to explain, to express, to thank, to comfort, to assure. Words that can't be taken back or changed.  Words that are a snapshot, a capturing of the reality of a particular moment, or emotion, or relationship, or point of view.

These shared words of note will come from many sources. I love biographies, and have (and continue to build) collections of letters and books about numerous obscure, familiar, famous, and infamous individuals.  I admit, I am a terrible journal keeper, and if there ever was a need for my own biography to be written the majority of  information would need to gleaned from the letters and correspondence I keep. A life remembered through the notes, cards, and messages I've made for and received from others... But really, those relationships are the most important part anyway.

Today's noteworthy correspondence is a letter from John Steinbeck - renowned author of The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Of Mice and Men - to his eldest son Thom, who was attending boarding school and had written his father about Susan, a young woman with whom he believed he had fallen in love.

New York,
November 10th, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning.  I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First--if you are in love--that's a good thing--that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone.  Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second--There are several kinds of love.  One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance.  This is the ugly and crippling kind.  The other is an outpouring of everything good in you--of kindness and consideration and respect--not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable.  The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love.  If you feel so deeply--of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel.  You know better than anyone.  What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it--and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful.  Try to live up to it.

If you love someone--there is no possible harm in saying so--only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another--but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan.  She will be very welcome.  But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to.  She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing.  If it is right, it happens--The main thing is not to hurry.  Nothing good gets away.

Love, 
Fa

[Source: Steinbeck: a Life in Letters]