A World Without Touch Is a World Without Trust

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Touch is our first language. Older than words, deeper than thought. Before we can speak or remember, we understand the grammar of skin against skin; the newborn’s cry quiets at their parents’ touch. This is where we all begin: not with boxes or categories, with contact.

Adult life was tactile — handshakes that lingered, embraces that meant something, the casual touch of a hand on a shoulder. We were a species comfortable in our own skin, fluent in the oldest form of communication.

But something changed. We seem to live increasingly separate, sanitized, and untouched lives. We text instead of visit. We wave instead of embrace. We nod instead of reach. Our relationships have become sterilized, distanced, disembodied. Researchers call it “touch famine” — but famine implies absence. This is something closer to erasure.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my aunt — not by blood, but in all the ways that mattered. She hugged everyone: mailmen, baristas, strangers’ kids, sometimes to the horror of their parents. She was one of those people others found embarrassing in the way some find joy embarrassing — too much, too open, too sincere.

But she lived to 94. Rarely ill. Surrounded by people who adored her. She was never alone, and never unloved. I’m not saying touch kept her alive. But I’m not…