Memories elude me. There are times I believe that my life has been a fiction. I look at my life story and doubt that it can all be true. But I can look things up. I have pictures. And sometimes, with a drink in hand and in the company of friends, memory escapes the depths of my mind and stories unfold.
Repartee unlocks long dormant events and feelings. I miss that give and take. Sharing time in the company of life’s fellow travelers. Our gatherings are now rare and delineated by Covid’s Rules of Engagement; Distance and digital portals. The loss of the personal, of the visceral meeting of our minds, is one of the damnable consequences of this pandemic.
Memories still haunt my nights. They seem often to rehash missed opportunity and failure. The failure to act or intervene when the moment called out. Things left unsaid that still hang in the air. Things that have been said when better judgment would have stayed my voice.
Friends are those who know you beyond your failures. They share your story and are the collaborators in your life’s tale. We all have regrets tugging at the back of our minds. It is the clean sheet of a new day that gets us up out of our beds and started on another chapter of our story. A day with promise, and day with some foreboding as well. That is our world now, riven with Covid and disorders afflicting the populace.
Physical solitude is an affliction that must be met with. Health is not limited to the body, but is holistically of the mind and spirit as well. Can there be a perfect body without the warmth of relationships to kindle its fires? And what happens to love in a world where people’s touch is imprisoned by fears? The embrace of one’s extended family, the fraternal as well as the familial, speaks a language beyond the limitation of our words. It may not be recognized as such, but touch is a language universal.
It may not always require physical contact. We join together in stadiums and concert halls to celebrate. We could listen and watch at home from the best seats in the house. Technology brings the sound and the glory of the greatest performances up close. It can be wonderful, but not personal.
Being there. In the moment. On a contact high from the sheer joy that is the product of sharing an experience with others. Performers feel it, too. Though their effort may lack the precision of their studio recordings, it is nonetheless elevated to epic memory by the soaring emotions of the moment.
The Beatles at Shea Stadium was a brief concert, a show unheard owing to the screaming mass of the crowd. As art it was seriously lacking. But as a human event it lives on indelibly. It did not birth a myth such as Woodstock nation. But if you were there, or at any stop on the band’s tour, you had an experience of a lifetime.
These staged experiences are notable for creating a community of strangers. A community of the moment. The moment persists in our memory, but lacks the consequence of a personal moment. So we need to seek them out again and again.
We create our own moments, less spectacular, but more consequential with the people in our lives. Family, and friends more close than some family, helped us create our lives. Other actors played roles big and small in who we have become.
It is not only the “big moments; weddings and birthdays and such. It is often moments when the unexpected occurred. When a kindness or the lack thereof created lasting effect. Like the “butterfly effect” of Chaos Theory, we can ripple across time because of a single interaction with another person. Remember that when you encounter an unexpected act of kindness.
And even as the pandemic slowly gives ground to the triumph of science, we must be able to reclaim some of the closeness we have lost during the pandemic. Handshakes may be unwise in this brave new world, but masks do not get in the way of hugs. I have been pleased with even the small sensation of elbow bumps with men who first wanted to shake hands. Awkward for just a moment, the elbow bump sparked smiles all around and communicated our happiness at meeting once again. I like handshakes, I think they symbolize a lot about greeting. But handshakes are used by warriors and diplomats who are not friends, and who are not expressing friendship.
Maybe a hug would be too much for casual friends and business associates. A handshake has been the standard. Perhaps an elbow bump or something of that manner can become an expression of friendship that is superior to the businesslike handshake. The fist bump, an elbow bump, or maybe another ritual altogether can emerge to fill that awkward space between the handshake and the hug.
Touch is as important a tonic as any elixir from the apothecary. Its affect is immediate, and without side effects. Nurses and patents often attest to its power. Our touch effects other’s lives in so many ways. Its value cannot be underestimated.
But lacking touch this past year, we sense that we are missing something even as we may not recognize what it is. It is human contact. Post pandemic, we must celebrate what ever ritual puts us back in touch with our humanity.