Time together and time alone

At some point, perhaps, I'll write a post that has nothing to do with covid-19, or lockdown, or the strangeness of 2020. But not yet. There is still too much to say on the subject, still too much to process and try and make sense of.

Over recent months our experience of human contact and interaction has, for the most part, been completely transformed. Normality, as we once knew it, has been turned on its head. Things we didn't perhaps even realise were part of who we are and how we relate to the world and one another have been stripped away or called into question. 

And in that space, perhaps, some of us, have learned something about what we want and need from ourselves and from those around us. As the months of lockdown have dragged on, I have found myself with contradictory cravings: for more time together and more time alone.

I am an extrovert. There is no question of this and I come out strongly as such on all sorts of personality tests. People who know me will not be surprised. 

I have been exploring and to varying degrees living community life for the last nine years. Our life at Carrs Lane is a highly peopled one with people coming and going and sometimes staying all the time. Almost 600 people have passed through the doors of the flat in the last seven years and, while some have been but fleeting visitors, with many we have built sustained relationships. 

I have always had people-orientated jobs which place human relationship at the very centre of their raison d'etre.

It is, perhaps, unsurprising that since March I have craved  more real human contact. And yet, despite my desire for human relationship I can identify a certain lethargy which has meant the reality of how well I have kept up contact with friends and family may not quite have lived up to my intentions. I am extremely grateful for the technology which has made maintaining relationships possible: but, like many of us I can also acknowledge its limitations. It is also a very long time since I have gone so long without encountering anyone new and while I value the existing relationships I have, this too feels like a gap. 

So yes, I was more than ready for the easing of lockdown which has gradually allowed more real human encounters to become possible. I am very grateful for the ways in which, through the summer, that has been the case. Opportunities to meet up with family and friends; re-establishing face-to-face meetings with the Stories of Hope and Home group: these have been very good things.

What has been, perhaps, more surprising, even to myself is that, in a strange way, through this lockdown time, I have also found myself craving time alone. It has taken more self-reflection to identify and acknowledge this to be the case and think about why. 

I suppose I have come to realise that while human contact has been extremely limited, that which has existed has had a certain intensity to it. Ours won't have been the only household thrown together much more intensely than we are used to. While the blurring of boundaries between work and not-work between home-space and work-space have long been blurred in my life, lockdown has intensified the challenges of delineating both time and space. 'Switching off' (perhaps literally!) and 'getting away' (not literally!) have felt more difficult when the same physical and virtual spaces are places of both work and relaxation. The prevalence of virtual gatherings has also brought an intensity to our human interactions which is very different to "real" face-to-face encounters, as 'host' in many of these spaces, that is perhaps especially so.

Whatever the reasons, I have discovered in myself a need for, and appreciation of time alone, even in the midst of my cravings to return to the days when I can surround myself with friends (and strangers). Through the summer I have also been grateful for opportunities to meet this need. I have recently returned (not quite as recently as when I started writing this post) from a wonderful two days in the peak district entirely on my own and if I didn't entirely manage to switch off from digital communication, I did better than I can usually manage at home.

I have no intention of universalising my experience, although at least one conversation with someone else has suggested I am not alone in living with the paradox of these contradictory feelings. I am sure we will each have experienced the challenges of this time differently, and as we emerge into the so-called "new normal" will be seeking different things in response to the challenges we have experienced and needs we have identified. Perhaps understanding and acknowledging our own needs and responses, and really listening as others do the same will help us all to be kind to one another, and ourselves, as we try to transition towards the months ahead.