Social distancing abruptly deletes the familiar faces in the familiar places of our lives, especially the peripheral ones. Our past routines were the culmination of our past choices – whatever or whoever we thought was best to do or be around at that time for whatever reasons. We admitted a variety of friendly faces into our regular schedules, and perhaps never again gave their presences in our calendars a second thought. But without that comfort of routine, we may discover that we don’t really miss these less important contacts at all, especially in comparison to those most important to us whose distances we feel most acutely and painfully. In fact, we may feel a surprising relief from social burden and obligation that we had no idea we would have felt.

Friendly but superficial contacts start with the best of intentions – with hopes of becoming something more or of a certain level of comfortable acceptance. But perhaps now, given this prolonged pause and the opportunity to look back and reflect, we may find that time has shown that they may not actually warrant the time that you had been spending with them just as a matter of habit. Yet we permitted their stay in our lives because we had already made space for them. But to put it bluntly, are they earning that space and that time? Or to take more personal responsibility, would keeping up these relationships be a productive use of our time and energy going forwards?

Not only has social distancing given us pause and distance for the potential impetus for a reset, but worries over health, homes, jobs and the economy have also been really stress-testing relationships. Times like these can bring out the worst in people by overloading those who are already stressed, just like our medical systems.

Of course it’s important to try to be there for people in general in this time of need and to do what we can, even for people whom we may not know very well. But what if we also actually decided to double-down on those relationships that really mattered while pulling back appropriately from all the others? What would happen as a result in our lives? What if we made sure that our time was well spent, being more focused on the people we truly care about, regardless of what their relationship currently is with us, and those who really get us, versus the ones who are more like pleasant distractions actually taking us away from work that we really want to accomplish? I for one want to find out.

One particularly disturbing news article triggered me to finally reach out to an old friend from whom I had blocked contact almost two years ago, because I was afraid for her life. Thankfully, she responded with care and respect for my boundaries and we easily made sure we were both okay. I don’t know how where this relationship can or will go from here, but at the very least, I realized that she really did matter to me as a person – regardless of whatever differences we had and whether or not we would be friends going forward – and I’m so glad I acted upon that recognition and made the choice to reach out to her. Now we can both be thankful that we know we are well. Perhaps the time was right.

In contrast, I am amazed at how much I’ve accomplished while forced to be alone and I think of how little most of the social activity I felt compelled to do on the weekends to catch up with people really achieved, in terms of tangible benefits for any of us. Yet we all just kind of accepted that these normal routines were the best way for all of us to be in community. But was it really? Or was it just something we didn’t bother to question which we actually should have? Maybe we need to think about culling our relationships as much as culling our belongings, instead of thoughtlessly adding and adding people and things to our lives as if more is always better. Instead of going with social inertia when we go with the social structures most readily available, maybe we can find ourselves a deeper and more authentic community on the other side of this pandemic.

#sars-cov-2 #coronavirus #socialdistancing #pandemic