I found out about Postcrossing through 43Things, and it’s just so very neat. I had lots of penpals in other countries when I was a kid, but often we ran out of things to say. A postcard is the perfect size to say something but not too much, and it’s wonderful to get mail (especially international mail, with all the different stamps and pictures of things you’d never know about otherwise).
I’m gushing a bit. But seriously, it’s so hard for humans to connect across cultures, and it’s so necessary for us to continue reaching out to each other if we want to work toward solutions for the huge problems facing us.
It’s like we have two choices in our interactions with other life (and I mean all other life—plants, fungi, bacteria, animals, other humans, etc): we can compete (i.e. be aggressive, vicious, dog-eat-dog) or we can cooperate. I happen to believe our strength as a species, our one saving grace, our most effective, bestest survival tactic, happens to be cooperation.
We’re so GOOD at cooperating when we want to. We just often choose the other path, which is easier in the short term (but oh so NOT in the long term—or when we’re the ones who happen to be vulnerable).
So when I find something cool like this, something that actually harnesses the connective capacity of technology for something positive (like Nintendo Wii, another of my recent favs), I get a bit mushy.
And don’t self-edit quite so much! ;)
