by Kathryn Gorman
I’m not sure how you’ve been seeing, hearing or experiencing the recent pandemic, but after nearly one year of varying forms of lockdown due to COVID19, I am completely O-V-E-R the virtual nature of my relationships and communication. When the Great Corona Lockdown was announced in March 2020, I had been living in Berlin, Germany for only two months. Having made the effort to connect with other writers and make new friends in my new city, I was frustrated when forced into creating virtual relationships.
Having to meet basic needs like go to the Supermarkt or Apotheke, I still engaged with people face-to-face, however mask-wearing made my ability to converse in limited Deutsche even more difficult. No longer could I read lips or see clear facial expressions to read the body language of others and communicate effectively.
The mask dulls the sound of a voice, reducing even articulate speakers to a mumble. The introduction of social distancing makes us unsure of etiquette and how we’re supposed to create a connection (rapport) with others. I can have (virtual) drinks or dinner and conversation with friends all around the world, but as we all know, it’s not the same. The slight sound delay frustrates me, like listening to a slightly-off-beat poorly played piece of music. And when my fellow Berliners all have the same idea of Skyping or Zooming or WhatsApping to discuss business or politics or life, the streaming slows and skips and freezes, leaving our expressed ideas floating in the ether.
Yet the thing which frustrates me most about virtual communication is not being able to look someone in the eye. If I stare down the camera to make virtual eye contact, I can’t see my friend. If I look at my friend’s eyes, I appear to them to be looking down. Or I’m distracted by my face on the screen, my tousled hair, how tired I might look or how fabulous.
Most of us do this, right!?! Like Narcissus staring into the pond, obsessed with his own image, sometimes I am SO distracted by my face I actually lose concentration. #badfriend. It’s not only me doing this, is it? At one stage, I seriously pondered if this made me shallow. However I conclude that it’s merely part of this new and very strange way of communicating which we apparently need to get used to, but which I resist with every fibre of my being. Just as I resisted virtual dating, or virtual networking or virtual drinks.
Because I did not come to this planet to have virtual relationships. I came here to engage physically–to shake hands, pat a shoulder, hug, kiss. To feel other people’s energy up-close, comfort with a touch or a smile, heal with my eyes. As a high kinesthetic communicator, whose main love languages are words and hugs, navigating the COVID landscape is bizarre. The other day I calculated how long it was since I’d seen my favourite people. Not in a photograph, or Bitmoji, or Instagram post or on Facebook, or grinning at me through my laptop screen. I mean IN ACTUAL REAL LIFE. I was sad to realise it had been over eighteen months. How’s it been for you?
As things begin to open up for us again, many of us find it strange to engage in that long forgotten and unpractised habit of…”socialising”. I caught up with some dear friends on the weekend, who came to Berlin for business, travelling from their hometown three hour’s drive away. Naturally we followed the correct protocol of only gathering two households. I’m single and live alone and I have been dearly missing personal contact with others. I warned my friends beforehand that I would probably need to give them lots and lots of loooong hugs, to, you know, catch up. One of them was fine, he’s rather kinesthetic and physically affectionate. The other was a little panicked by the thought of too many hugs; he’s a data-digital communicator and prefers words as a form of affection. A rather humorous exchange of emoticons and Bitmojis followed, yet I found myself resenting a reality which demanded we have that conversation. I reflected on the time spent apart, never to be retrieved, birthdays, Christmas, New Year, Easter, all spent in lockdown, apart, alone.
We are living in a dynamically life-altering epoch of intra-personal communication. For much of the world’s population, the corona virus changed how we communicate at work, at school and, in many parts of the world, even face to face communication is limited by the mask we wear. As a former educator, I feel for young children living through this pandemic, whose experience of social interaction is mostly limited to screens. I’m referring to children aged two, three, four, even five, who are still developing language, relying on the adults around them to model correct communication. Apart from family members, these little kids rarely get to see other people express a range of normal human emotion: smile, frown, cry, laugh, grimace. Not fully. Not where they can view the entire visage of the face. Furthermore, when these children are engaging with others, the fear of contracting corona is real. Parents dislike having to teach their child to say no when another child shares a cookie or a ball. They worry children aren’t learning to interact with their peers, are missing out on learning basic social skills like sharing, are socially impaired by social distancing. I wonder how this will affect their behaviour in the future.
My friend Susanne’s son is graduating from high school this year. He may never have a time where his entire class–who have studied together for six years–are physically gathered again in one place. It’s possible he won’t have a graduation ceremony–in person–with his peers. They’re turning eighteen and want to party, to socialise, to engage in right-of-passage behaviour vital to our social development and wellbeing. Due to fear of spreading the virus, this isn’t allowed. I wonder if a whole generation will be delayed in their communication because of these crazy times. Like children who grew up during WW1 Or WW2, whose schooling and home life and future were interrupted in significant ways.
Since September, I’ve been seeing an oncologist. Not seeing as in dating, seeing as in A Patient Of. My doctor is a lovely man with the kindest eyes, and he is super smart. He works at one of the top cancer treatment centres in the country. I completely trust him with my life. Literally. And the other day I realised I have never seen his face. I have no idea what this man really looks like even though I have met him in person many times. I’ve seen his eyes and his forehead and his slightly balding head. But I’ve never seen his nose, his chin, his completed face shape. I’ve never seen him smile. I think he does smile a lot because his eyes twinkle after he makes a little joke. But I can’t be sure he’s smiling unless I ask him. This man has become a lifeline for me, yet if I had to recognise him in a line-up, I’d probably fail.
So, I Googled him. Not to check on his experience or qualifications or how published he was. I Googled him just to see his face. As I looked at his photograph, I realised he did not look as I expected. My brain had been seeing his face as an incomplete jigsaw puzzle and filling in the missing pieces. Then I considered numerous other people I’ve met in the last year whose faces I do not know. My Zahnarzt (dentist), my Hausarzt (doctor), my Frauenartz (gynacologist) the numerous technicians and doctors at the Strahlentherapie (Radiotherapy) clinic, my Augenartz (opthamologist), my oncologist’s secretary who is so patient when I make an appointment in my limited Deutsche, the lovely nurses who take my weekly blood tests and issue a painful spritzer (injection), carefully watching my eyes to see if I’m in pain, my elderly neighbour who always wears a mask, even inside our building, the various people who work in the BIO Supermarkt I recently discovered, this list goes on and on and on. Most of us have these lists. And I’m possibly on their lists. But as adults, at least we are aware that we’re missing pieces of our reality. This is why I worry about our small children.
We know that when we look at someone’s (unmasked) face, we receive tiny packets of information which show us how they are feeling, what they’re thinking, how life is sounding for them. We learn how what we are communicating is affecting them. And then we know to adjust our communication for efficacy. We do this innately–now. But we had to learn it, just as we learned to walk and talk and pee in a toilet.
At the best of times, communication is not always straight forward. A pout, a cheeky grin, a grimace: all can be at conflict with the words coming from someone’s mouth, creating a mixed message, and these expressions communicate volumes. When we take expression away, we must rely on what the eyes are saying. When this is removed via virtual communication, we are left with only the words and a little waist-up body language. And as many of us know, we cannot always trust the words that are said; sometimes people say one thing with their words yet communicate something different with their body language. Words are only a small percentage of our communication; body language and facial expression are so much more.
Wearing a mask while I communicate is new for me because I did not grow up in a culture where people covered their faces or held the belief it is a sign of disrespect to look in someone’s eyes. I was raised in a typical Anglo-Saxon Australian household, and although we did experience multi-culturalism, it was still a white Caucasian society and we lived that way. So for me, the mask is a new and strange experience which I am still learning to navigate within my everyday communication.
I am longing for the day when The Numbers fall and things can return to normal, when I can shop sans mask and enjoy a meal in a restaurant, travel freely, visit a club or a cinema or museum in an historic European city. Mostly, I’m longing for the time when I can greet a friend with a hug in REAL LIFE, look in their eyes, shake the hand of a new acquaintance and see the actual faces of the people who are providing life-sustaining support for me as I navigate a strange breast cancer journey amongst the backdrop of COVID and social distancing.
I look forward to living a REAL life again, not a REEL life aka Netflix Binging, or a VIRTUAL Life via Zoom. I’m happy to do those things sometimes, just not all the time. Because I incarnated on this planet into a physical body to emBODY light, to shine like a star, to be a voice of truth in the darkness, to offer words for the soul. And after a whole year of limitations, I am ready to return to the REAL world.
I’m sure this world won’t look the same. We’ve transformed, we’ve re-evaluated, we’ve changed, most of us for the better. It’s possible this new world we are living in–when we can finally throw our masks away–will resemble the New Earth many of us came here to claim. Regardless, I’m positive I will never take face-to-face contact for granted again. It’s virtually too important: for happy communication, for social connection, and for the sheer and utter happiness of our soul.