Handwriting

Yesterday I saw an article on the BBC website describing the declining quality of handwriting. Mobile phones, computers and voice activated devices, among others, seem the obvious reasons for this decline. However, we should also stop and ponder and try to understand what handwriting is really made of.

When we look at our handwriting, whether it is neat or less neat, one thing generally become obvious...it is composed of straight lines (either vertical or horizontal) and curves. In many ways, handwriting is almost a geometric exercise, one that requires us to form certain shapes, we call letters, in a particular way. The other intrinsic quality of handwriting is it reflects speed, pressure, and angle. This is what adds to the distinctiveness of the handwriting. Depending on our own individuality, the amount of speed, pressure and angle when we write will vary. No two people could possible write in the same way, applying identical pressure, for example when the write.

Although this all sounds very basic, when we reflect on it a bit more, we realize that handwriting carries so much of our own individuality; in many ways, it is a real expression of who we are.

This brings me to an interesting question: as skill in handwriting declines, does this mean we are losing our individuality?

The modern tools I listed above allow us to write in exactly the same say, the same font size with identical spacing. In fact, many companies have standard templates describing the size of fonts for given types of presentations. While it does look neater and it can be animated, it carries no impression of speed, pressure or angle. These three dimensions may refer to what Steiner schools call the three-folded human being: Thinking, Feeling, Willing.

Thinking is often related to light. When we have an idea, in cartoon form, a light bulb is shown. In fact, we when find the solution to some issue, we say, "I see the light". Thus let us say that light is a quality of thought and we all know that nothing is faster than the speed of light. The speed which is reflected in our handwriting is the reflection of our thought.

Feeling, not emotion but feeling has an almost tactile quality to it. Even when we apply feeling to emotion, there is weight or lightness in this emotion. When we love someone, we want to hold them close. When we like someone less, more distance is better. Feeling then involves pressure. When we express our love for our children and hold them tight, we understand what this pressure real means. Thus, the pressure expressed in handwriting is all about feeling.

Willing is about doing, going out and getting it done. We don't even give this a second thought sometimes. Our legs move and carry us where we are going, with no further instructions from us. This is willing at its most obvious. As willing involves movement, then in many ways, then angle of our handwriting determines the movement we can make.

In this short presentation, we can see a deeper implication of the decline of handwriting as a skill. We will lose our capacity to share, through writing, a little bit of who we truly are, of what we think, feel and do as individual human beings.