To whoever finds this letter,
You and I don’t know one another. We may never sit and laugh over cups of coffee. We may never dance in the same circles or yawn together by the midnight hour. None of that really matters to me. It is so small and meaningless to the things I wish you would know on a daily basis: that you are lovely. That you are worthy. That those hands of yours were made for mighty, mighty things.
You probably think I am crazy. You are probably sitting here with this letter in your hands thinking, you cannot know that… you don’t know me… you don’t know a stitch of me. Yes, you’re right. But I know all the things I thought I never deserved. I know how very hard it once was to love myself and value myself and even find myself worth the reflection in the mirror. And so I know I am not alone in needing a boost some days, in needing to know that I matter to someone somewhere.
You matter to me. In a way I cannot explain, you matter to me. And you, you are a marvel… you and all the parts of you.
Love,
A girl just trying to find her way
Today was my day to sit down and continue to learn web design, but I came across a great article on the BBC website on love letters that I had to share since I’ve written previously about how I’d like to bring love letters back.
Hannah Brencher moved back to New York City after graduating and started feeling depressed and lonely, so she started writing love letters to strangers and leaving them all over the city. The above letter is the first one she left behind. She started More Love Letters and recruited others to write letters and spread the random acts of love.
According to the BBC article, random acts of kindness not only benefit the recipient but also the person preforming the act. A study published in the journal Emotion reports that performing acts of kindness may help people with social anxiety to feel more positive. Dr. Lynn Alden, one of the researchers on the study, said, “Engaging in kind acts may help the person to get out and encounter other people and then we can use other techniques to help the person change their beliefs about themselves.”
So what do you think? Are you more inspired to write a love letter now? I confess, I have not, but I give myself and you until the end of March to do so. I think that’s fair!
In Praise of Love 