One of the biggest issues in America and probably the world is not Covid-19 (made a resurgence this summer), the opiodic crisis, or any number of obvious candidates people could name off the top of their hands, a silent killer is this loneliness epidemic a lot of people like me have been suffering since work has largely become WFH, and people can access everything they need from the Internet with little need to go outside and talk to people. The apps and smartphones are great for convenience in ordering groceries by phone, playing chess on your phone, having team calls on the phone, ordering take-out from the phone, online shopping by phone....it's like the best things about the new world are also what's causing the loneliness epidemic.
I just had an in-person meeting with my the attorney team that I've worked with for over a year now, and I realized: this is what's meeting. I finally got to know what my teammates looked like, what they sounded like in real life, if they can take a joke or not, if they're rude, if they're polite, where they live, what kind of car they drive, what they like to drink, what they normally wear, how they respond to a hot day in L.A. Basically I learned in one hour at the Corner Bakery in Pasadena more than I've learned from a year's worth of communicating on the Internet and through Zoom meetings. I can't be the only one that feels this way, although I have a unique combination of having a small family, few relatives in the area who live in the U.S. much less in the same city, not living in the same city or state as I grew up in, parents who are pretty anti-social, and not being the target attraction of any particular social group: I'm a dispensible part of any group, no one's actively texting me going, "hey, let's hang!" I get that. But at least before the pandemic, I would see a group of people every day Monday-Friday, and get to chat about something, a reliable source of communication and a nice wall to the loneliness. (Granted, even before the pandemic there were co-workers who would never talk to me even though I tried to talk to them, and never try to initiate contact with me. I think those people are probably handling the epidemic better than me). I guess I just have a trait of feeling needed or talking to people, yet somehow finding myself at the public library or bookstore all the time, one of the most isolating places you can go. I guess I'm just a walking contradiction.
I think likely part of it is I've always worked at jobs that featured a big office with a large selection of people to talk to, often working in the same room with people where conversation could start at any time and it felt like a communal environment. I worked as a camp counselor where I talked almost incessantly to kids, then went to law school where discourse about assignments and life was abundant (I probably peaked in terms of social interactions in law school, boy would I love to go back to those times, without the studying for law school exams), to working on large teams of attorneys who had similar backgrounds as I did (and often spoke the same number of languages and could go back and froth in those languages), to suddenly just cutting off those connections for good and being exclusively at home from Monday-Friday in a room by myself. I can adjust pretty well to most situations, but after 4+ years of isolation and then being reminded me the past life just made me realize how much I miss it. And how lonely I've been all this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment