How Are You Feeling Today?
Stay in touch
Don’t let distances settle.
We have grown so far away from each other, and the only way we seem to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues is through the ubiquitous gossip-and-good-morning messages. If we can, whenever we can, call people up, and actually, physically, talk to them, we drop warmth, like drops of manna into the relationship. Ask them, as though we mean it, ‘how are you feeling?’ Listen, to what they say. Let them feel we care.
Don’t let distances settle.
All of us have realised in the last two years that we are spending the greater part of our time either brainwashing others or being brainwashed ourselves. Thinking independently, debating fearlessly and expressing a view point other than what ‘everyone’ thinks has become very dangerous. But there are people we know, among whom, and with whom we can be honest. Keep in touch with these people, lest we forget that honesty is our default mode.
Don’t let distances settle.
Solitude and loneliness are all very well, for a short space of time. We have built walls between ourselves that are so thick and impenetrable, that very soon, expressing ourselves through ordinary conversation will become more and more difficult. When have we had a meaningful, or even a desultory conversation with people beyond our work circuit?
Don’t let distances settle.
The very idea of dressing up and going out, of discarding pajamas and home clothes, for a space of time, however brief, of meeting other people, of maintaining eye contact with them creates fear in some of us now. That fear can crystallise into something that might become very ugly. The six feet distance can mutate into six yards, six leagues, six miles, six districts or six states…unless, of course, we are part of a religious or political gathering, a birthday party, a wedding celebration, or a rally.
We need to figure that one out for ourselves.
Don’t let distances settle.
Do whatever you need to build bridges, patch differences, reach across self-created chasms and destroy the silences that have grown up between you. Believing in, or against the vaccination, the WHO, and the WHY, or even the WHAT, rallies, toolkits, Rihanna, Greta, the PM, or the AM doesn’t need to destroy the social fabric that existed Before Corona.
Don’t let distances settle.
©️ 2022 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
Thank you, Diana C. for this theme of conscious relationships.
