Closing The Open Letter Trend

To anyone considering writing an open letter,

Don’t.

All too often, open letters are written from closed perspectives. In writing an open letter, you may wish to challenge an injustice, change a point of view, or even highlight a virtue, but in writing an open letter, all of this has to come through you.

What’s wrong with that? You’re a perfectly coherent, competent person with a voice and a vantage point worth sharing. Why can’t you share your voice as you see fit?

Because it’s your voice. It’s the voice you’ve discovered and developed from the events in your life. The point of your open letter may be about more than just you, but for your readers to understand it, they must also understand you.

In writing your open letter, you may assume that the conscious choice you made to work hard in life was what led to your success, for example. You may think that that’s the secret people are missing. That despite all the hardships and sacrifices you made to stick to that choice, it was worth it. You think if people can just do what you did, everything will be fine.

Your reader, though, has to understand that it was a choice for you to work hard. That reader, though, may have lived a life where working hard was not a choice. To that reader, your descriptions of extra hours at extra jobs, and no spare time for family or friends is a circumstance that the reader is currently in.

All the while, this reader has not seen the same success in life as you have, despite working just as hard. To this reader, the idea of hard work as a choice can’t be understood, and so, to this reader, your message makes no sense. Even if the very core of your open letter was to actually inspire people like this reader that there is light at the end of the tunnel, it will fail. It will fail simply because you expressed something that, to you, was a choice, but to the reader, it is survival.

You see, your voice is informed by your life. Your life, however, consists of uncontrollable circumstances and controllable choices. What you may be able to control, others may not. What you feel is uncontrollable may be something very much in control for others.

As another example on the other end of the spectrum, you may actually find yourself trapped in an uncontrollable situation. You have a sick family member who you have no choice (being who you are), to take care of. You have to manage a limited amount of hours for work, and a limited amount of hours with your family member. You have to work enough to provide for healthcare, but you can’t work so much that you waste the time you do have with your loved one.

The circumstances of life, in this situation, have drastically limited the choices you can make. In an open letter, you may want to challenge these circumstances. You believe that no one should have to struggle in the same way you do. You want people to know that this is wrong and unfair. You are likely, even, to be very right about this.

Again, however, people must understand you to understand your point. People who haven’t lived your life as you have might think it’s a better choice to dedicate as much time as possible to work. These readers may have even lived lives where hard work helped them to get through similar events. These readers, though, have never loved your family member as you have. They can’t understand how you have no choice but to be near this person, or to make time for this person.

So what’s the point of this open letter you’re reading right now? If you have an important point to make, don’t make it about you.

What worked for you won’t always work for others. What’s right for you may seem wrong to someone else. On the individual level, there’s so much beauty in the diversity that makes you, you; but on the group level, what applies to you can rarely apply to everyone else.

Change doesn’t happen when voices cry out alone. Change happens when voices speak together. If you want to speak for others, talk to others, join your voices, and express your message as a group.  

 You can still change the world with the words you choose; just remember, the words you choose are still for the world.

Image Source (Creative Commons): Caleb Roenigk