Being social makes us want to live
It took a pandemic to show me that, no matter how hungry I might have been afterward for a good outing and some social interaction, I’m still overwhelmed by crowds.
I said as much after a recent outdoor downtown event — the Main Street Food Truck Festival — that attracted so many people, the hubster and I simply walked 10 blocks rather than take what would amount to a full road trip in hopes of finding anywhere to leave the Talkmobile (with kids, were they present, asking us, “Are we parked yet?”).
Our time at the event was limited to slooooowly making our way through the masses and eyeing, with dread, what seemed to be mile-long waiting lines leading to trucks we couldn’t see.
We’d been to a couple of fun outdoor events over the summer, including Juneteenth in Da Rock, and had seen a healthy number of attendees. This particular event reminded me of my years-ago attendance, as a young adult, at Taste of Chicago … an event during which, being in a major city, one would expect not to hit the ground as they fainted due to the teeming masses keeping them upright.
We were relatively fortunate in finding a small barbecue truck that had a line whose wait time was somewhat shorter than the time it takes to read “War and Peace.” Once we procured food, we took our almost-old-enough-for-the-really-good-senior-discounts selves to the Democrat-Gazette offices, where seating and cool air awaited, and ate our meal.
Then, with nary the strength to do otherwise, we hiked back home.
“Yep. Officially too old for crowds,” I stated in my social-media post about the outing.
“I think that people are just busting to get out and do things,” opined a former schoolmate, one of a number of commenters. “After isolating for so long with covid, seems whenever there is an event, there are so many that show up!”
For their health, according to the experts.
I’ve read “post-covid” stories that back up what my schoolmate had said.
Ostensibly, we’re social creatures; matter of fact, we supposedly gotta be social to live.
“Bottom line, loneliness is bad for your health … ,” reads a 2020 article at psychologytoday.com. “A meta-analytic review, which analyzed results of roughly 150 studies, underlines the relationship between loneliness on our health. It found a
lack of social integration was more strongly associated with increased risk of death than were factors such as obesity or alcohol consumption.”
And of course we all remember those early-in-the-pandemic stories about people who threw caution to the winds to gather at social events (remember those Lake of the Ozarks swim parties?) despite the dangers of catching covid.
STORIES ABOUT SOCIAL ANXIETY
A 2021 New York Times article quotes Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology and the director of the Social Interaction Lab at the University of California, Berkeley: “We’re hyper-social mammals — it’s our most signature strength. It’s what sets us apart from other primates: We help, we laugh, we collaborate, we assist.”
That we Arkies have missed getting together has been obvious, judging from everything from the food festival crowd to the crowded football stadiums I’ve seen on TV. We on the High Profile reporting team are beginning to wade through the sea of social events, too, that have come back with a vengeance and a half, especially in light of lower temperatures that signal the approach of fall.
But there have also been stories about what a chore getting back into the thick of socialization can be. Psychology Today also carried a 2021 story that made the key point that “Returning to in-person interaction is difficult at the behavioral, emotional, and neurological level.”
“Anecdotal evidence suggests that the move from quarantine-related isolation toward in-person experiences may end up taking a real energetic toll on our bodies, minds, and spirits,” that story continues. “An arts writer participates in her first gallery visit in over a year and departs feeling exhausted and, oddly, numb. A business owner who has suffered through a year-long closure finds themselves deeply ambivalent about re-opening, making it difficult to gather the strength to do so. A teacher, tired of juggling distance learning, anticipates gaining energy from being with students but, instead, feels irritable and completely worn out.”
Then there are those of us who like the idea of getting back out there and socializing with folks, but who, even before covid, could best handle moderately crowded, suitably cool (outside temperature-wise or air-conditioning-wise) events at which there’s a guaranteed place to park; a guaranteed chair to sit in; where food either comes to us or is within reasonably easy reach; and where standing in line, if one must do so, is of moderate length.
My spirit does cry out against imposing such stipulations on events to attend for pleasure, because there are so many things I’d still like to do in this life that bring with them high chances of having to go through some pretty biting inconveniences, the most daunting of which can be summed up in two words: air travel. (Yep, I’m still getting nightmares about the two missed flights that were a real downer to the end of that February vacation.)
But the flesh is weak … well, less tolerant of things than it used to be, anyway, and it’s fast becoming a matter of “do I want to get out and do this, or just watch it on TV/try to somehow re-create the experience at home?”
Yep, it’s nice — and healthy — to get out and be able to see folks and have a good time again.
It’d just be nice to be able to skip the lines, have valet parking and be provided a good chair, too.