My hometown was always a bit small for me. I always craved traveling and living (for a time at least) in a big city. As a result, I’ve moved from a city of about 500,000 to one of almost 3 million. Most of my family has stayed back home, 90 percent of whom live in the same state and 90 percent of those in the same city. They can and do see each other pretty much weekly. My work schedule and finances allow that maybe a few times a year. I talk with my parents weekly, but rarely anyone else, especially my sisters (two of whom still live in our hometown). Recently my grandmother had a heart attack (albeit a mild one, thankfully), and I found myself guilty that I wasn’t home like most of my family to be there. Though I must admit, part of this guilt came from feeling like fellow family members were a bit resentful that I wasn’t home either. Also recently, I learned from my dad that his father is still suffering from severe depression from the death of my grandmother three years ago, and he asked me to give him a call, if only to say hi.

I can catch an earful sometimes from my parents about not talking enough to people I should (especially my grandparents), and I feel genuinely guilty for not doing so, but another part of me just doesn’t make the time to do so. I can be told I should call so-and-so just to say hi, but I find myself never consciously making the time to do so. I love my parents and sisters and grandparents and family, but I just don’t ever make time to call and say hi. To be fair, I never really make the time to call just to chat with anyone, but why can’t I find the motivation to do so with my family?

My family also tells me that my nephew, who is particularly close to me, misses me a lot and he wishes that I lived back home again. To which I can only shrug. I like my life in the big city and being on my own, but it’s clear that I’m breaking with the tradition of my family of having a close-knit (again, literally and figuratively) relationship. I feel guilty for living 1,300 miles away; I feel guilty when I have to fly back after a holiday visit; but most of all I feel guilty that I don’t have the urge to talk to them on a semi-regular basis and that sometimes I out-and-out dread it. I have no reason really to resent my family. They’ve never done anything that would make me want to disown them, but I feel incredibly selfish that I sometimes find talking to them a chore (and I don’t know if family members think of me as selfish as well); that I’m not as close to everyone as my sisters are; and that I would often prefer to spend more time alone or with friends than with family. Why do I find interaction with them to be a chore sometimes? Why can’t I be the family member that everyone else seems to be? What’s wrong with me?

The Black Sheep

Dear Black Sheep,

I suggest you do two things, one long-term and one short-term. In the short term: Call your nephew. Just call. It’s that time of year.

In the long term … well, let’s just stick with the short term a little more. In the short term: Make the calls you have been putting off. Be honest. Pick somebody, one person in your family that you can be honest with. Maybe your nephew is too young to get into all this with. So maybe your nephew is not the person to get honest with. But get honest with somebody. Pick somebody in your family you can be honest with. Call that person. If it’s hard to make the call, say it’s hard. If it’s hard to be living so far away, say it’s hard to be living so far away. If you feel bad for not being more in touch, say you feel bad for not being more in touch.

You can do these things. You’ll feel better after you do. It’s the holiday season. Lots of people are having a hard time. A few people are just filled with holiday good cheer and making everyone else feel like losers, but most are neither ecstatic nor depressed, just trying to get stuff done and put a good face on it. Many people are seeing family members they don’t see often, in social settings that are novel and fast-changing; certain people are going to be overwhelmed by too much contact; others are going to be impatient with the ones who are overwhelmed; certain people will be having surprisingly strong reactions to stuff for no apparent reason and only later will be sorting out why they had these reactions. Dread of certain conversations will be rampant. Certain people will drink too much and make confessions. In others, long-held resentments will flower. Feelings will be hurt accidentally, even by people with the best of intentions. The young, hip and beautiful will sneak out, have their pleasures, and radiate derision and boredom toward the rest. Many will feel alone even when surrounded by love. Most of us will somehow get through it.

You’re not bad. Maybe you’re different. But that doesn’t make you bad. Maybe you have higher hopes and dreams than the others. That doesn’t make you bad. You’re following your dream.

What can you tell your family members? You can tell them that you love them and miss them and you’re following your dream. You’re doing what you have to do.

And, long-term, I guess the thing is, and this goes for pretty much all the letters I’ve ever answered: Long-term, for the rest of your life, you are going to occasionally have conflicting feelings and you will need to develop a method for determining what is going on. I mean stopping in the middle of a feeling and sitting down on the floor or on a wall or at your desk and asking yourself, with passion, with courage, with commitment to the truth: What is going on? What am I feeling? Am I running away from something? What am I avoiding here? Is there something present in my consciousness that I don’t understand? Is it possible for me to address this thing, whatever it is, this big ball of avoidance and confusion, this big ball of pain, this big ball of black nothingness from which I very much would like to turn away? What is this thing that has appeared before me? What am I looking at?

That’s what you need to do long-term: Interrogate your reluctance, your instinctive turning-away; interrogate with love and acceptance: What is this? Is it fear, is it pain, is it a memory? Is it a picture of your grandparents, is it sadness about possibly losing them, is it guilt about not responding sooner, is it fear of being rebuked or scolded? What is here? What is present? Ask yourself, What can I know about myself that I did not know before? What can I accept, with open arms, that I did not accept before? How can I move forward?

And who can I call next?

This is a great topic for the holidays.

I wish everybody a good whatever you’re having. Enjoy the break from the routine, have some laughs, enjoy your friends and family if possible, and do something you haven’t done before.

And make the call.

Anyway, my grandparents, uncles and father have long since died. I have abandoned any semblance of Christianity — no trees, no Easter eggs for me — and have instead become interested in the religious tradition of my mother’s family. I still have a cousin from my father’s side who lives about 40 minutes from me. Every year, she invites me and my husband and kids over to her place for Christmas Eve. She is one of those highly repressed, chronically nice yet inwardly seething people who always tries to do the right thing and resents the hell out of the world for not appreciating her, but she’s too polite to go on direct attack. I feel she wants to go through the motions of maintaining the myth of family connection, as if that group were less horrible than they really were. She’s a very nice, good person who has been generous with my kids, and is reliable. She’s done a lot of stuff for me over the years, but I never felt like it was for free, thus I don’t feel safe with her emotionally. It doesn’t feel like an emotionally honest relationship. There is a subtext, but I don’t know what it is.

None of us can afford to spend a lot of money on gifts. She can’t, and I can’t. Nobody can. But I am afraid that we will be invited, and my kids will want to go, and I will feel obligated to go over there, even though I am probably not wanted anyway, and we will all give in to the pressure to shop in order to go through the ritual of giving gifts nobody wants or needs.

What is the deal with the competitive gift-giving thing, anyway? In my family of origin, it was supposed to prove that people cared because they couldn’t express caring in any other way but through money or gifts. They couldn’t say anything nice, they couldn’t be affectionate or warm — they were all bundles of grudges, resentment, suspicion, insecurity and bitterness.

Miss Manners would be appalled, so I’m not asking her, I’m asking you: How can I get out of this event? Is there any nice way to say to my cousin, to acknowledge, that none of us can afford to go through this charade? And then just not do it? Because what I wish is that anything anyone would spend on me they would simply take for themselves and buy something they really want and enjoy rather than give me something I don’t need or want and resent me for it. Do you get that receiving anything from anyone in my extended family carries the burden of resentments and unmet needs and accusations? It’s a drag. Why do we keep doing it?

You may wonder why I don’t invite my cousin to my house, which could be an option if my place were not such a dump — broken plumbing, holes in the wall, non-working electricity, a neighborhood eyesore, broken oven, rotting doors, chunks of house falling off, etc. Far from the Better Homes & Gardens image our grandmother lived by. No dining room, no place to sit. I hate the Holiday Season and wish I didn’t have to do this stuff anymore. Frankly, it would not surprise me if she really doesn’t want to do it, either — but how to address the issue? Or just make other plans?

Dreading It

Dear Dreading It,

Here we go again.

I was at Salon’s panel discussion last night about the meaning of the Occupy movement and, more broadly, this moment in our social and political history.

Every now and then what we all know and have been repressing becomes visible. Someone does something and it catches on and things change. It is hard to know when such a moment is at hand.

But certainly now is such a moment. The moment is at hand to make courageous changes both public and private.

It is especially hard to make changes in family practices when there is no larger context for them. One risks being labeled an eccentric or a troublemaker. But when a large social context appears — such as when the feminist movement happened, or during the era of civil rights protests — then individuals in families have an opening. It is as though taboos are lifted and people may speak. That is when we may make changes — particularly when everyone has known the change needed to be made but no one had the courage or the opportunity to speak up.

Your critique of how your family celebrates Christmas is nicely linked to the larger critique of our general economic arrangements. If we can speak of the unfairness of our current system, and its waste and destructiveness, we can also speak of the unfairness of our individual practices, and how wasteful they are. We can do this with a clear conscience. We can do it in context.

It is a time to make changes, some large, some small. These changes may be “political” in certain ways. But what is great about the current moment is that when “political” movements take hold they always touch individual lives in important ways.

One interesting thing about the panel discussion last night was that those of us who have lived through previous social and political movements were able to acknowledge what we learned from those past attempts to change our society. One thing we learned was that a nonhierarchical, consensus-based approach leads to a more durable — if messier — group process.

It was refreshing to consider afterward the wonderful benefits of just leveling with people, of just telling the truth and being heard.

So I hope that in some way this holiday season you can tell the truth to those who matter to you, and that you can be heard, and that you can be yourself and be loved for who you are. My guess is that you are indeed loved for who you are. My guess is that this relative of yours who has invited you over has a real appreciation for you. But, like you, she must struggle to find an “appropriate” way to put her appreciation into practice.

There are many dangers in trying to “fix your family”! But there are ways to simply be present in it, and there are ways to appreciate the flawed but sincere ways that people come together this time of year and try to share what is in their hearts. That is what many people are trying to do, however imperfectly they are doing it.

One idea that comes to mind is for you to give each person an envelope with a personal letter in it; make it a card, as a nod to holiday convention, but put a longer letter in it, too, telling that person the truth about your experience, and inviting that person to confide in you, if he or she wishes, about his or her real experience of the world and of your family.

This could be done quietly.

You might have to give these cards at the end, as you are leaving. Or you might write them in such a way that you are comfortable with each person reading what is in it. If you write what you truly believe and are comfortable with each person reading it — that is, if you refrain from slander and venting — then it might indeed be an empowering act by which you cease this compulsive and harmful thing everyone has been doing for years while acknowledging the universal drive to connect with others at this time of year and celebrate our humanity, such as it is.

Cary, New York City is bringing me down. I broke up with my ex (thankfully with very little emotional scarring), and have found it easy to maintain my close relationship with my brother via Internet and phone — he spends most of his time away at school anyway. I have rarely left the East Coast and have only left the country once, on a trip to Canada that I was too young to remember.

I have been to New York City for every field trip, family outing and special occasion.

Now that I live here I have this constant nagging urge to get out! Go west, north, south and see what else is in this country. I’m young, with nothing tying me down except the need to eat, sleep in a bed and slowly chip away at my student loan debt. I could do this anywhere, even in the service industry, where I am currently employed. Frankly, I could probably do it more easily in another city where the rent isn’t so high.

The problem is my mother. Our parents are long broken up, something she has always had trouble accepting and coping with. The resulting debt from the split and both parents’ unemployment or underemployment since has forced her to sell our house. She will soon be moving into an apartment as she cannot afford even a more modest home. Alimony from my father is not an option, and I am in no position to help her financially.

My mom’s had a rough go of it, and she’s never been able to handle change well. The house, to her, was a symbol of the life she was going to have: housewife to a handsome husband, two kids and a dog in an affluent community. Now, in her mid-50s, she considers her life a failure. She cries all the time. (It’s important to note that while the actual sale of the house is recent, our financial situation/my mother’s mental health has been like this for at least five years.)

I’ve mentioned leaving the East Coast before when I was considering graduate school, and every time she flies off the handle, claiming that I would be snubbing my roots. She’s never lived more than a few miles outside the town I was raised in. I worry that telling her I want to move away will destroy a woman who is already so fragile. It’s just her and the dog now, and she is so lonely. She has friends, but they are all married and well-off. She can’t really afford therapy, but goes occasionally anyway, not that it seems to be helping.

I take on a lot of responsibility in this family. I convinced my mother to sell the house not only to save herself, but to keep my brother in school — he is in a highly respected program that he deserves to be in. I hope to find a job where I can finance some of his education personally. I counsel my mother in most of her major decisions. I am the liaison between my father and every other member of my family. I can do all this from another location, but I fear that it will be viewed by my mother as abandoning her in a difficult time. Is it? I feel so selfish.

Should I put off my desire to a more opportune time? Will there ever be such a time? If I did leave, it wouldn’t be for at least six months, though I doubt she’ll be much happier then. How can I break it to my mother that I want to live a plane ticket away from her — at least for a little while? I’m at a loss.

The Guilty Daughter

Dear Guilty Daughter,

You need to separate yourself from your family and create your own survival mode and identity. This is a real need. It means breaking with your historic role in the family. But it does not mean abandoning your family and giving up the vital role you play.

This real psychic need may express itself to you as a desire to flee and never come back. That is understandable. I have felt that same impulse. However, what you need is a life that keeps you connected to your family while also allowing you to fiercely and wholeheartedly encounter the wild, uncharted nature of the world and of your own soul.

I think you should look for a place in your area that you can call home. But I also think you need to respect this desire to flee. Take it seriously and understand what it is. It is a psychic need. It can be met. You don’t have to abandon your family to meet this need. Paradoxically, having a home will allow you to flee. You can meet your own psychic needs without scorching the landscape of your family connections.

I note that you have strong competing drives. You want to help your brother financially even though you yourself have college loans to pay off. So you have a strong ethic of family responsibility. This is a good thing. It may feel at times that you are being held back by this. But it is a good thing. It is a source of strength. You have an important role in the family. This is not something you want to throw away. Nor is it something that you can fulfill admirably at a distance. You could do the minimum while living far away. But you could not really do what your family needs.

You say you could play the role of liaison from a distance, but in practice this role is going to require your physical presence. Your parents are not doing well in a concrete sense. What they will need is your physical presence. And I do think that being there for your parents is a valuable role for you spiritually. If you abandon that role, further deterioration of the family may result, and you yourself will feel a certain arid emptiness and wonder where it’s coming from. At the same time, I understand how hamstrung it can make you feel to be needed by your parents, how frustrating it can be, and how it can make you feel that you will never, ever, get away to pursue your dreams.

How can you achieve your dreams and meet your psychic need for individuation without moving 3,000 miles away? I see two main tasks. You do need to get away physically, but not 3,000 miles. You do need to get away for a significant period of time but not for years. You can psychically differentiate yourself by having an experience, or series of experiences, that answer your need for a clean break with your past. Such experiences can initiate you into the next phase of your life, which involves independence and self-reliance. This might mean immersion in nature, perhaps in an alien landscape. Perhaps a long sailing trip or an extended stay in the wilderness would provide you with the deeply desired and needed experience of true separation. To experience a different way of surviving, a different way of eating, of making money, of working: This is the way the spirit can satisfy its craving. (You might take a look at the book Nature and the Human Soul. It speaks eloquently about the need for transformative experiences in order to move from one sacred phase to the next.)

At the same time, especially since you have recently lost your family home, in which much was invested and many treasured memories resided, your longing for a home will be strong. You mother sounds like she is suffering great emotional loss. Perhaps you can establish a home midway between Manhattan and the place of your suburban upbringing where she can visit you.

This is long-term thinking. This will provide the best nest for your continued growth as a person. Meanwhile, have fun in Manhattan.

Our true needs sometimes wear disguises. We may think we need to move across the country as a way of expressing who we are. This is the symbolic representation of a need. The real need is to encounter your own wild soul, to be in nature, to individuate yourself and to forge a new mode of living in the world.

This can be done without abandoning your family.

So I suggest that you make yourself a home in the area but plan elaborate and lengthy excursions. Make these excursions that will challenge you spiritually, mentally and physically. Make wild nature a component of them.

That is what I wish for you.

Then, in his late teens, he told us that he was transgendered and was a girl. We coped. Since this is my letter, I’ll say that I accept her, though I think this is going to be a hard life. But other family members, including her dad, have been very, very accepting. Kept the psychiatrist, added in the hormone therapy under my insurance.

Here’s where the question comes in. She’s away at college and underachieving in a major way. She says that she can’t motivate herself to attend her less-than-full load of classes, can’t think of what she wants to do with herself, even in a short-term way. I don’t have buckets of money. I can’t send her to college for a warehouse substitute. Do you remember in “Charlie Brown’s Christmas” where Lucy diagnoses Charlie as being afraid of everything? That’s my daughter. I don’t know what to do. I love her, I’m there for her, I can send her to college, keep her in healthcare until she’s 26, but I can’t make her functional. If she flunks her fall classes, what do I do? I think it would be a terrible idea to let her move home and hermit in her bedroom for an undetermined amount of time. (and I know it would be bad for me because I would have an aggravation stroke). But she’s like a jellyfish — boneless, drifting. How do I help her move forward with her life when she can’t seem to make any effort at all? What is the right course? And let me tell you, she’s a savant at not getting a job. So making with the tough love on the get-a-job-or-else plan has been tried, I tell you, has been done, with a lot of tears and protestations of worthlessness and “I’m never going to etc.” What am I supposed to say to a person who is loved, smart, physically fit, accepted as a girl, and inert?

Sisyphus Mom

Dear Sisyphus Mom,

Your daughter is undergoing a miraculous transformation. It is taking all her strength. That is why she has no time for classes. This is an existential task. Think of her as pregnant with herself. Think of her as heavy and bloated with her own future, which she must assemble blindfolded.

Imagining her this way may make you even more desperate to do something. Of course as her protector you want to leap in and fix her skirt, tie her shoes, bundle her up, get her a job, set her on her way.

I suggest you do the opposite. I suggest that in the midst of this miraculous transformation your role is to do nothing.

Nothing is the most wonderful thing you can do right now. It is also the hardest.

Nothing is hard to achieve. Meditation is one way to achieve it.

See how long you can do it.

At times, action will be unavoidable. But when you are done with that, return to doing nothing.

It won’t be easy. Doing nothing takes everything you’ve got. But if you do nothing well, you will achieve something good.

It’s interesting that you say she seems “boneless.” That sounds like exactly the right word for what is going on: She is formless because she is in transition. She has given up a form and is in transition to a new form. In the meantime she must be “boneless.” Trust that when she has completed these exhausting existential and spiritual tasks, she will then be able to conquer whatever she chooses to conquer.

Let this fact into your heart: You are now the observer. You have brought this being into the world, you have done everything asked of you to nurture and care for this being, and now you are witnessing the miracle of autonomy. What better evidence of your essential powerlessness over your own progeny than the fact that your son turned out to be a girl? What better evidence that even a parent is merely a bystander?

Do not worry about the future. When she has completed her current task, she will turn to the tasks of becoming a functioning adult in the world.

There is one possible exception. If she becomes depressed, she may need professional care. So watch for that. Watch for signs of depression. But be careful to distinguish depression, if you can, from the healthy exhaustion of a Herculean transformation. If you are worried that she may be depressed, insist that she get counseling.

Meanwhile, she needs space. How do you create space? By doing nothing.

She doesn’t need instruction. She needs air, food and water. Create room for her and let her fill that room in a natural way.

That takes trust, or, if you prefer, faith.

Try to see your former son as a person trying to know his own soul. In looking into his soul, he saw the face of a woman staring back. What a shock it must have been! Kudos to him for undertaking this act of becoming. What a courageous act. How manly of him to become a woman.

In the midst of change, when we are neither worm nor butterfly, we need protection. Do what you can to protect her. Stand by her. Support her when she needs it. Pray for patience and serenity. Have some reverence for what is transpiring.

Trust in what comes next.

The thing is, though, while I truly can’t remember the last time I rustled through newsprint, I can recall the last time I put pen to paper to write a letter — and it wasn’t in some bygone era. It was just one year ago, when I wrote a thank-you note for a birthday present.

Upon tearing open the gift wrapping, I first thought about emailing a thank-you note, and I certainly had the technological wherewithal to do so, not to mention the gift-giver’s personal email address. But then, my hand moved inexorably from my keyboard to my wooden desk drawers, and I watched myself carefully excavate the accumulated office detritus, finally unearthing the dusty old box of stationery (“What’s stationery, Dad?”).

While I’m sure such anecdotes warm the heart of the struggling U.S. Postal Service, I find myself yet again in the post-gift, pre-thank-you-note aftermath of another birthday — only this year, I’m suddenly wondering why. Why do so many of us still feel the need — and corresponding dread — to write the physical thank-you notes, rather than using more modern technology to convey the sentiment?

If this were a musical rather than a written essay, I would attempt to answer this great unknown by doing my best Tevye impression. I’d spontaneously break into an arm-shaking rendition of “Fiddler on the Roof’s” “Tradition,” which, not coincidentally, was played during the candle-lighting ceremony at my bar mitzvah.

I say “not coincidentally” because almost a quarter-century ago, at the wide-eyed age of 13, one of my first experiences as an Official Jewish Adult was being indoctrinated into the mercurial institution of thank-you-note writing.

Every bar mitzvah gift honoring the notion that my plump, pubescent awkwardness was somehow a sanctified sign of Jewish Manhood required a personalized, handwritten thank-you note. This was the ironclad edict in our household. Failure to follow was out of the question, as the edict was enforced under the unspoken threat of, well, the unspeakable.

And so under my mother’s watchful eye and with my father’s “speak softly and carry a big stick” presence lurking in the background, I dutifully swallowed my complaints and spent as many post-bar mitzvah weeks at the kitchen table with the dreaded gift list, thank-you cards and Bic pens as I had spent pre-bar mitzvah weeks at synagogue with the Torah, Haftarah and pointer. (In retrospect, perhaps the thank-you torture was an equally important part of my religious education as scripture, for during that slow, painful process, I began my formative years of scholarship and expertise in the mystical canon of Jewish Guilt).

While most of us didn’t have email back in those days, it wouldn’t have mattered. We had both the telephone and the possibility of personal interaction. But, as you are well aware, the nondenominational, near-universal thank-you-note tradition didn’t permit substitutes. You couldn’t telephone a relative and thank him or her for the good luck wishes of “chai!” embodied by the $18 check. A scrawled inscription on a piece of paper was the only acceptable means of expressing thanks.

Since those halcyon days, of course, almost everyone has acquired a dial-up modem and AOL handle, followed by a DSL modem and Hotmail account, and later a cable modem and Yahoo address, and finally, Wi-Fi and a permanent Gmail home in the Cloud. And as that evolution accelerated, most of society’s (and even Jewish society’s!) letter-in-the-mail practices have been supplanted by email.

Yet, incredibly, the thank-you note nonetheless survives largely unscathed.

No matter the occasion, no matter your position as the one celebrating or the one being celebrated, the physical thank-you-note tradition remains at the heart of a perpetual motion process whereby gifts come in, thank-you notes go out, then gifts go out, and thank-you notes come back in. It’s as if the ritualized effort — the wrist and finger pain of writing cursive (“What’s cursive, Dad?”), the paper-cut risk to your tongue of envelope sealing (“What’s an envelope, Dad?”), the horrible aftertaste of licking the stamp (“What’s a stamp, Dad?”) — all of it remains the only way to prove one’s authentic gratitude. And if this sacred cycle is ever broken, the result is overt spite or passive resentment — whichever melodramatic poison is selected by the affected friend or family member.

In this, we see that the true ethos of the thank-you note contradicts one of the fundamental aphorisms of childhood. If keyboarding, calling or in-person thanking is simply not enough, then, in fact, it’s not “the thought that counts.” Instead, the tradition implies that it’s the elbow grease and pain that really count.

Traditions, though, can — and at times, must — change. Hell, even Tevye had to learn that hard lesson. And for me, this recent birthday is one of those times of change.

If I wanted to be conniving and dishonest about it, I would tell gift-givers it must change because of some high-minded concern like global warming, deforestation or the economy. I would turn Jewish Guilt to my advantage, telling them in my thank-you email or thank-you phone call that I’m taking a principled stand against sending them a physical thank-you note because I’m worried that mailing needlessly expands my carbon footprint, or because I don’t want to waste precious wood-based paper, or because postage is blowing a devastating hole in my recession-battered budget. For this, I’m almost positive I’d not merely get a pass — I’d generate sympathy for myself (and maybe even some extra gifts).

But, no. Screw it. I’m not going to lie. I’m just going to change the tradition with no explanation. Those generous enough to give me a gift — and I truly appreciate them all — are just going to receive an email or a phone call with no explanation or apology for a lack of physical thank-you note, because the real reason to change the tradition has nothing to do with anything high-minded or political. It’s going to change because the tradition simply makes no sense in the modern world — and traditions shouldn’t exist in perpetuity without justification.

To know that is to contemplate gratitude standards of the past. I’m sure 150 years ago, a telegraph was seen by some as an insult in lieu of a Pony Express mailer, just like I’m sure 50 years ago ago, a ballpoint-penned thank-you letter was seen by some as an insult, because Old World elders expected parchment, calligraphy and one of those “Dangerous Liaison”-esque red wax seals that make an envelope look like a discarded coaster for a Maker’s Mark bottle.

Somewhere along the line, though, our culture decided to accept a different dominant platforms. And you know what? We survived — and evolved.

For sure, a few family members and friends will interpret my abrupt change as a sign of conceit. These will likely be the oldsters of the bunch — the stubborn few making a principled, almost admirable stand against the 21st century by categorically refusing to have an email address.

“Oh, I guess he doesn’t think he needs to thank me,” they’ll mutter a few thank-you-note-less days after the birthday gift … until the telephone rings and they hear me on the other side slathering them in appreciation. Then, surprised, they’ll be sugary sweet to me — they’ll sigh into the receiver (no doubt, corded and attached to a rotary device) and tell me “you’re welcome.” Alas, though, a tiny few will still hang up and mutter to themselves about the goddamned ingrate and his lack of thank-you note.

But here’s the reassuring part: My bet is that the vast majority of my clan won’t even notice the change. Not because they are some special breed of human that doesn’t desire praise. Not because they don’t want to be thanked. But because in the age of information overload, platform agnosticism and content disaggregated from its branded source, the medium no longer has to be the message. The message finally can — and should — just be the message.

And for that, we owe this crazy, maddening, frustrating, awful and wholly confusing digital age the biggest thank-you of all.