Have You Heard the One About the Envelope?
Kurt Vonnegut, American Author
I saw this clip once where Kurt Vonnegut told his wife he was going out to buy an envelope. His wife said “why don’t you just go online and buy 100 envelopes and put them in the closet?” He pretended not to hear her and went out anyway to buy that envelope. And along the way he got to smile at a baby and see a fire truck go by and ask someone what kind of dog that was… for him, buying that envelope was an essential exercise in his own humanity and he cherished every minute of its mundaneness.
He called us all dancing animals and said we needed to move and experience life. Kurt died in 2007 at the age of 84. It’s a very different world now, but does the lesson transcend? It’s definitely an interesting take, given the current state of 2025’s humanity.
I think about this story when I am choosing to buy something online that I could very easily get at a local store, which, to be quite honest, happens a lot in my life. But I trip on this idea of time a lot. I mean, it’s heavy. There’s just so darn little of it in the whole big scheme of things, and I tend to get stingy with it. Maybe you do too.
I feel like I’m always looking for ways to save a little time or effort. Most of the time it’s for good reason - at least I think it’s for good reason. But it begs a different question, doesn’t it?
Sometimes we save time, but what do we give up?
I don’t have the answer. I just wanted to pose the question.
