Gifts From the Business Class

Do you ever run a search on a topic and uncover some really relevant information on a blog or commentary page? And then you look at the date and it's the same day as your search? That, I confess, makes me suspicious. Other, more mystically minded people might say the Universe was pulling them toward that topic, or the author sent up a psychic beacon that you keyed into. I'm not averse to metaphysics, but I'm also keenly sensitive to online manipulation, so I wonder if there's some kind of program that spoofs the date or something... not that it's better to be paranoid than New Agey...

Photo: The Guardian

Anyway. Last night I was searching for topics on postcards in general and I found this really sweet little instructional guide, A Postcard A Day, written  (the same day I was searching, mind) for business travelers with families. It is touching for two reasons: it's touted as a more emotional connection with the people you leave behind. You can call, you can Skype, but it's something entirely different for a child to receive a colorful postcard of another city or some beautiful landscape, on the back of which the traveling parent has written a personal note or drawn a couple silly doodles. And to get one of these every day becomes an exciting ritual, itself a palliative to missing one's parent on a trip.

The other reason is that the author really believes in this. In this Business Insider column, Brad Feld mentions he has written about this three other times. You know what it's like, how it feels when you find a personal solution to something in your life. Through trial-and-error you discover an elegant pattern that amply satisfies a number of needs or conditions, and its not enough to implement it yourself but you have to share it with everyone. Because this is the fourth article Feld has written about this, I get the sense his heart is bursting with this simple technique of happy-making and, on some level, he feels a drive to hammer away at crustier, stodgier hearts with it. "You've got to trust me and just try this simple, effortless little thing," he's saying, "it really will make things better."

I can totally relate to that. And as a deltiologist and a postalater, I value that he is boosting for postcards.