We Need Each Other
Space to freely gather is something many of us took for granted, or forgot about, even before the pandemic.
The yoke of adulthood encouraged us to resign ourselves to a fleeting extended adolescence in college, before finally accepting the 9-5 job with no free time, and normalized feeling cut off from the world.
Human connection became optional, something to be carefully partitioned in alongside a million other things, rather than a regular part of our lives and routines. When loneliness became a cultural standard, the best we could hope for was a little more time for ourselves at the end of the day, far from any additional pressures. When most of our exchanges were transactional or forced or in an environment where interdependence, transparency, and empathy would have difficulty thriving, it made sense to withdraw. Functional groups seem to have become things of the past or temporary ecosystems. Beyond our individual lonelinesses, which are painful enough, we became divorced from the very notion of reaching out to our own community for help.
Corona has sharpened this phenomenon and removed the last places we had to go after work— bars and restaurants disappeared and have returned as struggling shadows of their former presence, feeling a little more hollow than before. It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just the new way, everything feeling a little less clean, everyone acting a little less trusting.
With few real common spaces where people of different walks of life could genuinely connect, and an escalating atmosphere of paranoia and confusion in general, it is no wonder that slowly we became more separate from one another, so much so that quarantine triggered an encompassing loneliness deeper than anything we have ever experienced before. With social distancing further becoming our reality, going long periods without contacting others become normal and accepted. This means that we have to be more creative in our interactions and more determined to cut through the cumulative layers of isolation and distrust that have shaped our culture. We have to rethink how we can change the places where we are in ways that make them more hospitable to us, and connect in ways we didn’t or perhaps even couldn’t before.
I lived a lonely youth as an only child with a traveling salesman father, so my eyes were always trained on anything that resembled a community, someplace to go. Some people told me that “things weren’t how they used to be” or others would say that nothing resembling a hub existed, that it’s always just a ragtag bunch of misfits rooted in vices and self-regard. How many times have we heard that people don’t care anymore, don’t help, don’t pay attention? My parents used to say all the time, “we are on our own.” This idea normalized everywhere I looked, I lived in a world I did not understand, a world full of people who could not ask for help or did not know where to go to find it, and those who could not help, because we did not even have the chance to meet. With connections based on trust and the ability to participate in mutual aid rather than the often detached charity-based relationships we encountered, our situation would have been much easier, the duration of it shorter. The urban layouts and temporary spaces made friendships brief and reaching out to the wider world for help terrifying, shameful, and ultimately a shot in the dark. I still always noticed that whenever circumstances allowed even the smallest of friendships or communities to form, they would. People came together when they could, because that is what people naturally do, unless they are conditioned not to or have no outlets. And where there are none, we find them.
In the microverse communities I have known, makeshift families checked on every member, looked out for each other’s needs during vulnerable times, and otherwise settled on the inevitable human truth: We need each other. I don’t see that as much anymore. Part of it is the temporariness of groups and friendships in this college town, but it also feels like that sense of community is more fleeting than ever, and was even before this virus.
I have wondered where it has gone and why community spaces have a hard time existing outside of tightknit friend and family microverses. I have often thought that empathy is a lens. Some people’s lenses are more focused in, or wider, but we all have the ability to adjust our lens to some end. How do you get people to widen their view of what is possible for their community? Everyone is always busy now too, a sign of how good of a job capitalism has done to keep us just alive enough to keep showing up for work. How do you push past this to establish spaces in the community that make living closely in community a prosperous and attractive choice?
Mostly I just want a place where anyone who wants to help build solidarity in times of trouble instead of walling away in seclusion can go. But how do we do this in the era of social distancing? With fear of Coronavirus oozing out of almost any mix with people, it’s no wonder that attempts to organize more solid structures for togetherness are even harder to do than in the previous disconnect. Even so, there are still ways for us to help each other, to be seen, even from a distance at first, and now with all of our society’s problems splayed out on the table for the world to spectate on, we have the chance to be more than spectators. As we watch Coronavirus wreak havoc on the world and our own communities, we can begin to make change in the places where we happen to be. Even though the world is a little stranger and frightening now, there is fluidity and possibility in this too. With less forced interactions and more emphasis on keeping other people safe, perhaps we can find room for conversations we actually want to be having, ones that go beyond social niceties and become relationships, real change.
I just keep thinking that we have to adapt. We still need each other. That never stopped, only becoming more true when the virus hit. We have to find ways to connect, a common space for people to air their grievances, ask for advice or help, help get work done, barter and trade, and otherwise exist independent of the many structures in society that have failed and even actively mistreat us. I am convinced that we can do better than these systems, we don’t have to be impersonal like the things we face every day. We can try a little harder to reach out, because as soon as we see the world we live in and those in it as a lost battle--it is. I’ve seen how easy it is for friends to become strangers, for someone who doesn’t even know you to simply want you to be okay.
We need each other, and we can make social distancing a part of our lives without becoming cut off. The reality of living under social distancing slowly becomes a reality of serving our social needs, while keeping physically distant as we work to understand what this looks like.
What we’re also dealing with is an old and ingrained lack of faith and trust in other people, loss of hope in the neighbor, or worse, not even knowing who the neighbors are. More and more are struggling and have been the whole time; we needed no world disaster to prove anything to us about the nature of things.
We can convince ourselves it is possible to shut the door, sit down, and wait until things blow over, but I know it isn’t. I knew on nights I got out of work and realized none of my friends had time to see me, or vice versa. I knew when a lack of social contact began to feel like being in some way deficient or inept, rather than not having a place to go, or a reason to go there. My tiny one bedroom apartment, where I often cohoused with friends during hard times, was far from a suitable gathering place. The campus clubs and events were nice while I was a student, but all I could see waiting for me after was a slammed schedule and endless promises of getting together soon. Now, with the idea of “getting together” increasingly nebulous in our minds, and a constant atmosphere of unease and catastrophe, we have to learn to move through this changed world with the knowledge that we don’t have to be alone, and never had to be.
If we had more spaces for local discussion, even if they are just online at first, maybe more people would come forward to use them. The people need a place, a town center. There must be spaces to discuss problems, triumphs, to share our creations and skills with each other, and work through fears and traumas, as many of us are without our therapy. Not everyone can afford to pay for a zoom call session, and I’ve even heard cases of people being ghosted by their therapists. There must be spaces to trade things people need, to find services and tools. Original artists have lost their platforms and people aren’t going out to the galleries. Farmers need more avenues to sell their wares and with the potential threat of food shortages, the ability to grow food-or know someone who does, continues to be vitally important. Although much can still be done online, it doesn’t replace face-to-face interaction.
And because this virus is such a big deal, we need to be extra careful but we can’t give up on gathering in-person entirely. I want to learn what that is going to look like in a world forever changed. It isn’t just the physical nature of the meetings, but the point of them.
Would people gather at this place to share news, do workshops and skillshares, to pool resources and find donations for projects, meet online for discussion on what facing what this new world looks like to all of us, what it looks like on a local level, and what it could take to get people working together and having a safer, more self-sustaining community as a whole? Everything from food security to social theory to what happened to us this week needs to be on the table. If there isn’t a time, an avenue or a place, we need to make one. Too many are still falling through the cracks, in dangerous levels of unchecked isolation. For some people, this level of social distancing can prove deadly.
My dad used to tell me that if you could count your friends on one hand you were lucky. Our attitude toward the other has become an echo chamber of bias from the constant feedback we get, and not even from people we know. It comes from past experiences, and from a lack of positive experiences. If we had the right setting, with the freedom to understand and see value in each other’s experiences and abilities, more of these crucial bonds would certainly form.
People need a place to go to feel safe, to share their art and skillsets and expand them, to teach and learn and build things that might hold up better against whatever comes next. Maybe forgetting the notion that we should be alone is a survival strategy. Maybe remembering that our future isn’t gone yet is easier when you have others around you to go to for help. Maybe it has been drilled into us through programming or grim experience that others can’t be relied upon. Our loneliness isn’t random. This distance is by design, predating Corona by far. Keep people separated and unable to unify and they will be less likely or able to disrupt the status quo. Keep them busy and working, but most importantly, gut community spaces that promote individual growth and mutual aid.
We have to find more and more creative ways to fulfill our need for each other. We need a hub, even if it isn’t in person for a while. There were so many times in my life I felt like I had nowhere to go. I would have felt so much more lost without the small friend groups I managed to form, both online and in person, and how we helped each other with what we had. I’ll never forget that, and something about it still calls to me. If I felt that way, that probably means someone you know does too and we should together do something to help.
We formed these bonds because we needed them. Perhaps we might not have survived or matured into anything close to who we are now without them. My parental figures were absent or quite vulnerable themselves. We were carrying it all, and sometimes carrying each other through it.
So, when the entire world is going through this dark night of the soul, all I can think of is finding some way to get around what has been done to us, to our towns and cities and neighborhoods, whatever it is that makes people not come out, not speak out, not move, ask for help or care for someone else. I want to know what makes us still, stagnant, silent, or simply avoiding the trickier topics. I want to know where individual self-care culture ends and collective self-care begins. We didn’t start the fire, no, but I would rather make a place that is strong enough where maybe less of us are going to get badly burned. I know this won’t be the only thing that saves us, but ignoring it passes off a vital tier on the hierarchy of needs. Regardless of this, we no longer have to turn to a sick society, and never did. Our ability to face the pandemic increases, and we become more able to brave the chaos of a rotating political landscape and increasing division, and almost every problem an individual can face. What does coming together look like now? Whatever it takes to get us talking, relating, connecting, and knowing about one another.
