Keeping what you receive, before you know it matters

The value of a letter is almost never obvious on the day it arrives.

Most people throw out the ordinary and keep the ceremonial, which is exactly backwards. The letter about a promotion is pleasant and predictable. The unremarkable one, describing a week, a meal, a complaint about a neighbour, is the one that will astonish somebody in forty years, because it contains a life as it was actually lived rather than as it was announced. You cannot tell which is which at the time, so the only workable policy is to keep nearly everything.

Keeping does not require a system, but it is improved by a very small one. One box, in a dry place, out of direct light. Envelopes kept with their letters, since the postmark carries the date and the address carries the era. A pencilled note in a corner when the context would otherwise be lost: who the writer was, why the letter mattered, what had happened that week. Future readers will forgive the pencil and thank you for the sentence.

The alternative is what usually happens: a clearing out during a move or after a death, done quickly by somebody who does not recognise the names. Sorting your own correspondence, occasionally and unhurriedly, is a small act of care aimed at a person you will never meet.