Wow – and in the middle of blogging about what great things happened in 2020, 2021 comes in with a freaking BANG A RANG! Holy Cow! I feel like 2020 is trying its hardest to become a distant memory.
The first week of January is always a busy one for me. I go back to work after a week off, and I have my older, his boyfriend, and my younger – all with birthdays in the first 11 days of January. It’s my cute Capricorn snowstorm. So honestly, what I did NOT need was an insurrection this week. I didn’t have time for that. Someone really should have asked me.
That being said, I am not going to be derailed from my positive series here. I will absolutely address the craziness that is and will continue to be January 2021, but before I do, I am going to continue the current attitude of positivity. This time, I want to discuss how the pandemic affected my friendships – in a positive way.
I shared with you the growth my relationship with my grandchildren and kids experienced due to COVID. But what about others?
During my kids’ youth, which also happened to be during the advent of the internet and social media, the majority of my social activity revolved around community theater – being an activity that takes a massive amount of time over a short period (think cramming for an exam), these were often the only people I spent time with outside of work. For many of us, other than family, “theater people” was our circle. We did shows together. We saw shows with our friends, and we saw other theater people there. My theater person friend had a party inviting all their friends, and I met them – also, predominantly, theater people.
As social media exposed more of who we were, many of us stayed bound by the “we need to compromise with everyone, otherwise, they might not be our friends anymore” attitude that so many people, probably in ANY exclusive activity, tend to have with each other. We didn’t want to “unfriend” people just because we disagreed with them. I mean, you could see someone at a show, or in a show. You weren’t going to start turning down parts, and you didn’t want to make life awkward for yourself or anyone else – so you just ignored it. Each time there was an event – a protest, a shooting, an election, a boycott – some people agreed, some people didn’t, and we moved on.
Unfortunately, over the last 15 or so years, things have occurred in the country – involving issues that many people consider inherent to humanity – that made those compromises more difficult. Most notably this year, there has been a significant amount of eye-opening realization. While in its infancy, social media conveniently brought us all together in ways we couldn’t even imagine, it also exposed sides of people that had us questioning our alliances.
Maybe it was the fact that we couldn’t leave our homes, and all our communication was virtual, but it seemed like 2020 brout more of it to the surface. What was interesting was that it went both ways. Not only did we see the negative sides of people we didn’t know well, but we also saw the positive. I learned that many people that I knew superficially actually thought the way I did. In this interesting and exciting virtual world, I found myself drawn to some of these people.
Like the negative, it didn’t start this year – people have been sharing their opinions since Al Gore invented the internet. But – again, maybe because of where we were this year – we could see the people we aligned with as well as those we didn’t.
It started small. Someone likes someone’s status that calls for social justice. Someone recommends a book, and someone else orders it, reads it, and tags you in their review. Slowly, over the years, the “likes” and comments built up, and we saw how people felt about sports teams, movies, politics, religion, and so many other subjects.
When the shit hit the fan, so to speak, it became even more apparent. Again, maybe it was the idea that we could only communicate with each other – even our families – virtually, maybe it was that people are just sick and tired of the way things were going in the world, or maybe (most likely) it was a combination of the two. Who knew? Whatever the case, it seemed that this year, more than ever before, people were willing to “die on a hill,” so to speak, for social justice and human rights.
For some reason, maybe because the pandemic put me in front of my computer pretty much constantly, I started noticing when people seemed to feel a certain kind of way – angry at something, needing help finding a resource, or just wanting a video gradudation party for their kid. I started reaching out to some of these people -people I knew from theater but had never appeared with onstage, people who perhaps I had actually never met face to face, but who I had connected with through others –I reached out to say hello, to offer an ear, to share resources, to offer a joke. And I made connections with people I wouldn’t have otherwise. As a result, I feel a little bit closer to some of my social media “friends.”
This does not mean by any stretch of the imagination that these people and I will now be having lunch together every week. But it means that when we do talk, we speak just a little more intimately than we did in the past. It means I can wake up on a Saturday morning to a text from someone I’ve actually spent time together with face to face twice in history, and it will make me laugh as if we’d grown up together. It means when I see two or three posts from someone I know, but not very well, that indicates they might be hurting, I don’t feel weird about reaching out to ask if they’re okay.
It’s hard to grow relationships in a pandemic, especially the less personal ones. Hell, we’re having trouble keeping our brains from exploding. It has happened, though, for a few people in my life.
And for that, I am very thankful.
Final installation in what was good in 2020 – Self-Awareness and Communication
Don’t take my word for it, look it up yourself.
Remember, Grandma Lili loves you!