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Dina and Todd, a couple I had just begun to see in therapy, had a major fight and have broken up. Dina's back with her mother and the only communication she is having with Todd is by texting. Although this has been very efficient in figuring out what to do about the dog and their shared possessions, what happens to their memories of each other?
The missing part that concerns me is how actual dialogue can spark memories of the relationship - images of shared experiences in the shadow box of our own consciousness. To lose this process of remembering and its result is to strip away some of the delicate bark that protects the essence of what it means to be a human being. I don't know Dina and Todd well enough yet to say if they should stay together, but I do worry that texting is not going to allow them to find out. Their relationship's future is being mediated by telegraphic paragraphs that can fit on cell phone screens. How will they make the best decision if their current images of each other are text-based?
If they were to talk face to face, speak on the phone, or even write letters, they would have to draw on a greater store of mental imagery, of linkage to the vast library of shared moments that their memories have stored. The blinking black letters that leap across Dina and Todd's cell phone screens are brief bursts in the present - like ants on a sheet at a picnic - momentary blips that can be wiped or shaken away.
You might ask, ‘How is a text different from a letter?' Both are written communications and the writer and receiver are not in each other's presence. There are a number of ways - a letter contains the physical manifestations of its writer in a way that a text does not. The unique handwriting; choice of paper and pen; the scent of perfume, aftershave, cigarette, or coffee that is a stowaway within the folds of paper; the sheer word count of the typical letter that only a Tolstoy of the touchpad could match - all of these elements conjure up specific memories and physical images of the person writing the letter. Even a "Dear John" letter helps you to know better who the Jill is that is rejecting you.
Now, of course, people don't write letters any more. I am not advocating for a return to Victorian epistles as a main vehicle of relationship. I am simply saying that texting subtracts vital dimensions of imagery and physicality from the negotiation of very important human relationships. Now maybe this is exactly what Dina and Todd intend, but whether it is the best way for both of them to know what they ultimately want is less clear to me.
All of our more stream-lined forms of technological communications - texting, email, My Space - by removing the physical cues and tangible presence of the other person challenge the persistence of human contact in our memory banks and contribute to an increasing ephemeral quality of contemporary life. My Space with its instantaneous posting of pictures from recent events takes away the effort of recollection, the work that two friends or a group of friends might do in recreating the event depicted. The experience is displayed instead of relayed and this loss of memory's elbow grease takes away heft and definition from the body of experience.
What will happen to Dina and Todd is unclear, but one thing I fervently hope is that they sit down and talk to each other, or talk on the phone, or write thoughtful letters - Anything that will allow them to feel the presence of the other - bad or good - that will engage memory in order to acknowledge more fully the human dimensions of the other person whom they once claimed, and perhaps still claim, to love.
