The lost art of being social

There is something truly awful about being the only couple at a restaurant. Whereas after years of travel, I don’t have a problem dining alone, I still detest almost nothing more than occupying the only table at a venue.

For me, it’s the loneliest and the saddest feeling, and makes me wonder if the occupiers of our table are the only people left on the planet, everyone else having been vapourised or turned to ashes in the apocalypse.

The past few weeks felt exactly like that. With the country back to level 4, schools, places of worship, gyms, and entertainment venues closed, we were once again confined to our tables. So palpable was the feeling, that on Shabbat when I went to shul and saw people, I was pleasantly shocked to see that not everyone had either died from COVID-19 or made aliyah. Those being the only two options that I could think of.

To some extent, it was as if we emerged from hibernation, blinking in the harsh light, whilst trying to adjust to the strangeness of seeing actual people. People with full bodies who don’t come with a mute button.

It also became clear to me that I have become socially unfit. Not in the same way that my family might think that I am, but in the sense that I have less social stamina than I once enjoyed.

Even being an extrovert and someone who is energised by other people, I found that the few conversations that I had with living, breathing people quickly exhausted me. In no time at all, I was overcome by the need to scurry home to the sanctity and relative silence of my home where I could have a little lie down.

I had never considered people to be draining before, but then in times gone by, I was also more practiced. I might even once have been an athlete. Just of a different kind. The social kind.

The end of the third wave coinciding with the return of warmer weather is somewhat of a pathetic fallacy. The phrase “pathetic fallacy” was coined by John Ruskin, and is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that aren’t human.

It’s a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. Whereas we know logically that the heralding of spring has little to do with the end of the third wave, and that the sun is no brighter than it was the day before, it does feel like that.

Just as for me, being at the only table at a restaurant creates the impression that we are alone on the planet.

What’s clear is that there isn’t going to be an easy transition back to life as we knew it. It will take time to get used to the many things that we have been precluded from doing. And, much like an untrained athlete, we will need to build up stamina and strength before we are socially fit again.

Step one, however, is to walk outside, turn our faces towards the sun, and enjoy the change of season. Pathetic a fallacy or not.