I’m having second thoughts about something. Before I share what I’m talking about, let me explain why.
If you’ve been with me long, you know I lost one of my best friends, Shawn, in 2022 to a stroke. After he passed, his adult daughter contacted me, asking me to go through his compact discs and then do something with them.
I grabbed maybe 30 or 40 of them, even though I don’t really listen to CDs anymore. I’m all about streaming. He had no idea what streaming was, nor did he seem to want anything to do with it. Now, I’m grateful because I have something tangible that he left behind.
“I can’t imagine going even one day without music,” he once told me. Music spoke to him on a deep level.
After receiving his CDs, I spent the next week or two listening to each one in my car, trying to find little nuances to the songs he loved that might speak to me as well. In some cases, we had similar tastes, and in other cases, not so much. But that didn’t matter. I wanted to hear what spoke to him.
On Monday night of this week, I had dinner with a couple of friends. They were already in the middle of a conversation when I walked in, so I’m not sure how it started. But it had something to do with a pastor who preached in multiple churches in England each Sunday.
At one point, my friend – who was stationed in England for a while – said the pastor possessed a handwritten letter from John Wesley. It wasn’t written to the pastor, and it didn’t say anything of consequence, but the fact that Wesley wrote it meant something.
The letter was something tangible that outlived Wesley – something a person could hold, read and store for safekeeping.
Recently, I unpacked some boxes that may have gone unpacked over the course of my last two or three moves. One of them contained two books from my dad, and I recognized them instantly.
One was about how to make toys, and the other was about how to play tennis. Both books contained dated inscriptions. Seeing his handwriting after all these years (he’s been gone for 26 years) made it feel like he left a piece of himself behind.
Also in one of those boxes was my grandmother’s family Bible that contains her handwritten notes. It sustained a little damage but thankfully, it’s not severe. It’s a precious heirloom that reminds me so much of her.
I’ve written in recent months about how I prefer digital – digital music, digital books, digital movies, digital communication. My preference for those mediums hasn’t changed, but I’m really thinking about the significance of the second life of physical things.
A playlist isn’t the same as a stack of worn CDs. An e-book doesn’t carry notes in the margin. A text message doesn’t preserve the shape of a person’s handwriting. Movies on DVD don’t disappear the way they do on streaming services sometimes.
So yes, I’m having second thoughts. Not about streaming versus physical media as much as being more intentional about preserving the tangible things I already have, like my notebooks, printed photos and budding collection of music memorabilia.
