This story originally appeared on the Gents Cafe Newsletter. You can subscribe here.
“You’re given a free holiday, but you can’t share any picture of it: are you still going?” The fact that this can even be a question could spark a somewhat alarmed reflection on the times we’re living in. Some might even argue that travelling is by now devoid of its deepest meaning – exploration, discovery, adventure, unwinding – and the sole purpose of many voyagers nowadays is just to share their trips and holidays to impress online followers.
But is it really the case? Is the desire to share images from distant places a prerogative of modern people? I don’t think so.. Postcards, arguably the analogue version of an Instagram post from exotic locations, are almost as old as the concept of travel for leisure: the earliest recorded ones were printed in Switzerland in 1872. After all, the desire to immortalise moments and experiences has been alive in human beings since the origins of the species – would our ancestors paint the walls of their caves otherwise?
What the digital era offers us, though, is choice. We can snap the Tour Eiffel, Taj Mahal or Golden Gate Bridge and instantly post the shot online, letting everybody know where we are – and again, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, as long as you also enjoy the moment personally – but we can also, and still, send postcards to our loved ones. However, while an Instagram post will soon be lost in a digital cauldron of food pics, reels, memes and unsolicited advertisements, that printed card will last for decades. Sometimes lovingly displayed on a shelf, sometimes innocently neglected in a drawer or shoe box. And it will never lose its meaning – a sincere, thoughtful and personal message of affection that someone wanted to send from thousands of miles away.
So the next time you’re on the go, don’t be afraid to fill your profile with pictures of the holiday – but spare a thought for your cherished ones, and show them you care so much that, to you, they deserve an old fashioned and everlasting souvenir from the other side of the planet, sealed forever in the timeless charm of a postcard.
