The Simple Joy of Writing by Hand

Have you ever seen that we’re writing by hand much less and fewer today? Typically it’s only a signature with a blunt stylus on the grocery retailer, or your finger signing crudely on a bank card pay display screen. Handwriting definitely seems to be like a dying kind, as we kind away merrily on our keyboards, responding to emails that fly off in all instructions.

Is that this withering away of handwriting an issue? Or is it the inevitable unfolding of language varieties evolving over the centuries, from oral to written to printed, and now digital? Earlier than we sprint headlong ahead, let’s decelerate for a second and take into account the position that writing by hand performs.

An Artwork Type Value Reviving

I consider that handwriting nonetheless serves a deep goal in our lives and that letting it fade away can be a loss to our spirit. Exactly as a result of it’s now not important for communication, handwriting can now be free to precise its true nature as an embodied follow of creative expression, a synchronization of thoughts and physique. Handwriting needn’t fold up and die. It could actually rise once more as the unique creative act, distinctive to every of us, obtainable to all, and actually shut at hand.

Earlier than writing, people made marks. They had been drawn within the sand, painted on cave partitions, carved on rocks. The making of those marks grew out of a deep need to attach with the facility of the world. By drawing the tree, the bison, the moon, an understanding occurred, an power touched. (Anybody who attracts is aware of this.)

Our alphabet advanced out of those drawings—of an ox, a fish, a hand, a hook, a home, a cave. These varieties had been handed alongside, the unique pictures changing into simplified within the dealing with. By 1200 BCE, an alphabet of twenty-two letters emerged with the Phoenician merchants and advanced over time into the Roman letters. This syllabic system was environment friendly for commerce. It additionally remained a magical portal linking the interior voice with the outer world, bringing ideas into kind via the motion of the hand and stylus on the web page.

Our Brains Like It When We Write By Hand

A latest article within the New York Occasions (“What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades”) described a examine at Indiana College the place youngsters who had not but realized to learn or write had been requested to attract a letter freehand, then hint it from a dotted define, after which press the proper key on the pc. The researchers had been amazed to see that the mind exercise from the freehand drawing motion was stronger, firing off in three totally different areas, whereas the tracing and typing motions barely stimulated the mind in any respect.

The article went on say that apparently youngsters who handwrite are in a position to generate concepts extra simply, and that older college students appear to retain data higher once they take lecture notes by hand. There’s something in regards to the messiness of writing, its variable nature, that wakes us up, fires the synapses, brings us to the duty at hand. That historical manner of understanding the world via drawing continues to be at work within the technique of writing by hand. It seems it’s the imperfection and changeableness of how we write that sparks our inventive circulation.

Writing By Hand as a Mindfulness Apply

Whether or not you take pleasure in your handwriting, or are embarrassed and uncomfortable with it, getting on the web page every day with some “slow writing” can open your channels of creativity and maintain them buzzing.

It is a follow of seeing ourselves via how we write, permitting our handwriting, and ourselves, to be distinctive, quirky, imperfect—and appreciated.

This isn’t about enhancing your handwriting, anymore than meditation is about enhancing your character (although each could occur as a facet profit!). It’s a follow of seeing ourselves via how we write, permitting our handwriting, and ourselves, to be distinctive, quirky, imperfect—and appreciated.

Once I write by hand, I come below the spell of the varieties and the magic and thriller of who I’m and the way I present up on this world—the confused, shaky self, the swish straightforward moments, or the half that doesn’t know what to say subsequent. The letters are the marks left behind, the tracks of my interior journey via this life.

Once I write by hand, the acquainted shapes tumble out and make new mixtures. However it’s one thing in regards to the bodily act—the holding of the hand and pen—that’s meditative, bringing me into the current. The physique sensations are the muse—the ache, the contact, the softness of the paper. The shifting line is the breath that retains flowing alongside. And the phrases that present up on the web page are the ideas taking form, the climate showing on the horizon.

It’s this physical aspect of writing—the sitting down and listening via the physique, the hand, the pen—that may carry forth one thing substantial and true. Every form, every phrase, is an expression of how the world resides in me. Once I write by hand, I maintain going all the best way to the top of the web page, having fun with the sensual contact of all of it, the best way the letters hyperlink and dance and skip alongside, my fingers ready expectantly for the following pulse, the following wave, the following thought exhibiting up, able to be described. Handwriting is the reporter, giving kind to all of it, grounded previously, amazed and current to this second.

Embracing Each Outdated and New

I’m not suggesting we abandon our computer systems and return to pen and paper. (Although taking the time to write down a considerate handwritten letter generally is a actually nourishing exercise.) I’m as concerned as anybody with the ever-expanding world of on-line data.

What I’m proposing is that handwriting can grow to be a contemplative follow, a generator of perception, a deepening down exercise that counterbalances the huge, quickly shifting digital world we’re bathed in. Handwriting is a powerfully easy method to carry natural creativity and connection again into our lives. It’s an act of wholeness.

Apply: Put Pen to Paper

Sit down with a pair sheets of paper in entrance of you and a pen that you just like to write down with. Really feel your physique, your fingers holding the pen, your hand resting on the paper, your arm able to information, your ft on the ground or your again resting on the seat.

On the prime of the web page write the phrases, “Once I write by hand,” after which discover what reveals up in your thoughts subsequent. It could possibly be a reminiscence from childhood of studying to write down—or an aching in your fingers on this second—or one thing in regards to the sound of the pen touching, pausing, shifting alongside on the web page. Describe no matter it’s, following the associations till you come to a pause in your ideas.

Write the immediate once more, “Once I write by hand . . . ” and head off, letting the phrases tumble out, not involved with making full sentences or excellent punctuation or spelling. Sit steady. Let your writing decelerate. See how the varieties change with this shift of pace. Discover the way you’re feeling.

Replenish two sheets of paper, or write for 10 minutes, then learn what has come via. The place did you begin? The place did you find yourself? You’re concerned in an age-old act of bringing the loftiness of thought—what the traditional Chinese language referred to as “heaven”—all the way down to the practicality of “earth.” Becoming a member of “heaven and earth” via human expression is the essence of artwork.

This featured follow appeared within the June 2016 issue of Mindful journal