This morning I woke up with a bit of a different attitude. I realized I don’t not want to distance myself from anyone. The thoughts below came to my head, and so I wrote them down, and thought I would share.
In this time of what is being called social distancing, I’d like to rephrase it to physical distancing. After all we are social, and by nature, we are driven to serve those whom we love. We have the innate ability to treat our neighbors as ourselves. To make sacrifices that don’t benefit us, but to serve the greater good. Even if the good is a small number of people. It could be your family you are staying home with. It could be the family who you are going to be with in their home. It could be the people you serve, your neighbors, who rely on that nature driven service that feeds your soul.
It really doesn’t matter what group you are with because the social aspect we crave is fed and nurtured by being in contact with each other. We may not be able to touch, or even feel another’s touch, but we can look into their eyes and feel the emotion. When we can’t see each other, we can talk, and more importantly listen. We can feel the emotion in our neighbors words. Possibly hurt, or confusion, or even anxiety, but the very nature that drives us says , we must talk, and we must listen. In the most extreme measures of separation, we may not be able to touch, or even see, or even hear, but we can still communicate.
We, as social beings have always, and will continue to always find a way to communicate. Not so much as for the reason to be heard, but because we need to feel, to socialize and to be comforted. This is all to say that even though we can’t touch, or see, or hear, we can be social. We may not physically be able to be there, but we are here. We are here for you to lean on, to trust, to help cope and to help see the way to the future, and most importantly, to love. We are not socially distant, we are just physically not together.
