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Lost e-mail syndrome
By: BG Stroup

LOST E-Mails
I wrote a most important e-mail to a friend. One little mistake, when transferring from 'Word" to e-mail, and-poof, it was forever gone. With sinking Heart, I tried to get it back. I was drained, and felt like I had been sick for a week

I tried to rewrite my lost letter, but found it impossible to do, as usual. An Sich, I knew that it was hopeless to struggle with it. So, I decided to write about it instead

The following pertains only to lost letters, of the kind which we consider to be most important. Please bear that in mind.

The first thing that popped into my aged (76) brain was to call it the 'lost letter' syndrome. It is definitely a special category of feeling that comes upon one when he/she finds that words that had been laboured over, or which had come flowing almost spontaneously, have been utterly and irretrievably lost.

It doesn't much matter what the content of the letter was, because the sense of loss is directly comparable with the importance that one attached to it.
When one writes, it is certainly a truism, that it is to communicate something that the writer feels to be important, not only at the very moment one is writing the letter, but also at the moments that one is writing about. Every time a letter is written, it immediately becomes past tense for all practical purposes. Even if the letter is something concerning the future, it is still, in an important way, 'past tense.'

We must know then, that since all writing is in the 'past tense,' that the writing of our words actually necessitates our living in a time when we envision the things we are writing about. Even when writing about what is going to happen tomorrow, the need to think about the subject is thrust upon us and we write in certain words with respect to numerous factors that may influence the words to some degree. Leibenswelt, respiration, how tired we are, exuberance, feelings of all kinds. We could go on and on. Let's simply say that the exact conditions that were present when we wrote the letter cannot be exactly duplicated again. It is a non-sequitor. There is no possible way that every condition and nuance of thought can ever be brought together again.

When we lose the letter, we lose it all. It is gone, not even existing in our mind in exactly the same way. Thus we have not only lost the message, which was important to convey, but we have lost the means by which to convey it. We can only write a pale imitation of the original. The sense of loss that rushes upon us is indeed a very great loss. Our thoughts, put in the written word, are gone. It's almost a case of 'mourning.'

This feeling is so intense that for a little while, we cannot comfortably write about the same subject again. We have been purged.

The feeling subsides fairly quickly, because such feelings, however devastating, are meant to be temporary. That in itself must be a blessing from the most High God, because no philosopher can explain, staying within their field, how such traumatic and devastating losses (am I exaggerating?) could be so temporary. That is of course, excluding the Christian philosophers, who have resources that the others do not avail themselves of.

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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