Okay, now time the following: open up AOL or whatever email program you use. Click on new message, type in email address, subject line. Then type “Hi, just wanted to say good morning. Things are busy today so let’s talk at the end of the day!” Those are 20 words. At an average rate of 60 wpm, that took 20 seconds. Run spell check, hit send and you are done. How did we do? Pretty much close to 1 minute, right? That is of course not counting how long it takes for the message to arrive. That could be another minute or another hour.

So what is the difference you ask? The difference is like night and day. To hear a person’s voice instead of reading a computer screen makes a gigantic difference. I will give you another example.

A couple of years ago, a dear friend of mine suffered a stroke. Unable to talk, he was laying on the floor of his apartment paralyzed. Then the phone rang. By somehow moving his body against the desk, he tripped the phone on the floor. With the receiver now of the hook, the party who called could hear that something wasn’t right. They called 911 and rushed over. Today, my friend Bart is completely rehabilitated. Now imagine if the friend instead of calling that morning had opted to send Bart an email. Bart would have been on the floor unable to do anything. Not getting a response back, the friend would have been irritated and not try again. Two days later the maid discovered Bart dead on the floor. Exaggeration? No, not really.

I just had an entire argument by ways of email. A 13 year friendship, which started before the advance of the World Wide Web, ended up being played out online. It is bad enough that the art of true letter writing has gone the way of many things, but we are becoming alarmingly more reluctant in exhibiting human contact. We hide more and more in the mazes of the WEB to avoid confrontation, conflict and responsibility.

The written word is a wondrous thing. It can unleash your imagination, inspire your dreams, and invoke the greatest passion. It can also set the wrong tone, call on the wrong emotion and be misinterpreted. We all joke around with our friends from time to time. Now say I would have gotten up this morning cranky and irritable. I check my email and here is a note from you that says “Listen you freak, how about dinner? Its your turn to buy” Given the state of mind I was already in, that note did nothing to brighten up my day and quiet frankly pissed me off to the effect that I responded “Cook your own damn dinner” Now, if I had woken up in a good mood, my response would have been “Pick you up at 7, you nerd”

There are a million words out there; none of them can ever relay the same passion, love, sadness or any other emotion written than when they are spoken by another human voice.
Stevie Wonder wrote a song entitled “I Just Called to Say I love you,” I wonder if he would have had as big a hit if he had called it “I Just Emailed to Type I Love You”

For 7 cents a minute, make a difference, be crazy: call someone.

My name is Sven.