Thought Picnic: The anchor of relative companionship

The power of real and virtual touch

It is quite unusual for anything to knock me sideways, as I try to regain focus on the important things and concentrate on matters of relevance and development. I guess what keeps me going is helped by the support and interaction I have with Brian, who though is far away always has the comforting words that buoy me when I am feeling listless.

It goes without saying that things would be much better with the human touch, a tight hug and a kiss, rubbing my back and soothing words as you feel the breath of closeness expressing love can go a much longer way. And whilst I am hardly the best to give any relationship advice, I can say without equivocation that having the stability of a partner in your life gives you more than an anchor to weather the storms of life.

In the bosom of knowing love

When surrounded by turmoil and uncertainty, you know there is a place you can go to where home provides safety and security, the shelter from where you can renew your strength and stand again to face the world. Our relationship though mostly spent apart than together even as we plan for when we can be together for longer provides a kind of enduring safe harbour that I cherish in my life.

I know that things would turn out right, they always do, blessings and favour encompass us to bring us not only to a good place but into the best and ever-improving pursuit and realisation of our goals. The obscure becomes more evident with each day as we press on diligently and hopefully hold each other and support each other. Just that smile and everything is alright with me.

Experiencing the mental health detriments of a pandemic

One feels alright

Are you alright? I hear people ask, and I answer, I am fine, thanks. I think I am fine; I feel I am fine, generally, things are fine and well. Yet, they are not so.

Some of the consequences of the pandemic are not as studied or appreciated to any extent, the mental health consequences. In terms of relationships, I am engaged, but we are on different continents almost 9,000 kilometres apart, we were last together in January and communicate daily keeping faith, hope and love alive until the circumstances allow us to meet up in South Africa soon.

To feel human

However, at the crux of this issue is the fact that I am a lone occupant of my apartment in a big city of impersonal glances or stolen greetings. My social interactions are only on Sunday, first at church in our socially distanced seating with masks on, no singing, no touching and pleasantries at a distance. I have not shaken a hand or felt the tight grip of a handshake in probably 9 or 10 months.

Sunday evenings, I meet with my close neighbours for wine and snacks, much banter, smiles and laughter, they have companions and family, I return alone to my abode comforted by the video conferencing with my fiancé or telephone conversations with friends I have no seen in ages.

Touch feels good

The last time I hugged someone was when we hugged at O. R. Tambo International Airport in mid-January. My social humanity is under stress and seriously strained. I was probably last touched when the nurse donned gloves to take blood in April, it remains the last significant human touch I have felt.

I am at work with colleagues I have never physically met, we have been working together since May, but I have been working from home or living at work as the case might be. They have families, some even visit the campus of the workplace, so human interaction takes place to an extent, which for many like me, we live in an electronic age of sight and sound, smell is local or just home as the restaurant culture is literally gone, touch is anathema as it is to be avoided and taste is what you cook or put together to eat.

Senses feel lost

You wonder what this pandemic has wrought upon the earth, it takes away your sense of smell and taste, then robs you of the enjoyment of the sensation of touch, whilst the use of sight and hearing is constrained to a world bolstered mostly by electronics. As social animals, we have lost the social and the animal begins to disintegrate without the grooming that comes with the socially enhancing qualities of human interfaces, much of it physical.

I am fine, I have found coping mechanisms, I am working with the expectation that things will ease up and soon a semblance of living like a real human being with all senses in deployment will come. That sensation of skin on skin, the warmth of touch, the whispering that triggers and excites the ear from breath to sound, the expression of love when lips meet and tongues tussle, you melt into each other with a longing that no words can yet express.

That is what keeps me sane, for I reckon, all this shall pass, the night always ends in the breaking of dawn, no matter how long it seems to our consciousness. There is stress, there is strain, but we prevail.

Living on the force of hope

For a touch so human

The last time I had any human touch was over two months ago when I was in the hospital for my biannual check-up that would have involved phlebotomy and that touch was gloved the nurse in protective clothing and the needle went seeking veins in both arms without success that another nurse had to have a go too.

The other human contact I have had has socially distanced with friends in a park and with my neighbours on our weekly Sunday soirees for wine or port and a bit of banter.

Being alone at home as I have for months has been an exercise of mindfulness, the perspective formed of being in a retreat rather than in a lockdown situation. Thoughts of being restricted or limited are put in the background and away, as each day brings the promise of interesting things and my curiosity leads me to new discoveries that gladden and intrigue.

Phonetics from childhood

Even a chance encounter I forgot as I was out for a walk on Sunday, a father pushing his daughter in a stroller was on the phone as he was able to cross the road. What he was saying sounded familiar, he was speaking in Hausa. Obviously, I had a little chat to him, in Hausa, telling him my knowledge of Hausa was from over 40 years ago, before I bid him farewell, probing not further.

If my memory serves me right, I last saw someone speaking Hausa in Manchester probably 5 years ago in Argos, two ladies and their kids. We did not say much either, we just exchanged pleasantries.

On my mind, always

Another thing occupies my mind apart from work which is still not in as full as flow as one would like it to be. Brian, on my mind, in my head, and in my heart. Just how I wish I were counting down the days to something amazing. I miss travelling, I miss the company, I miss the companionship, I miss the embrace, the kisses, the love.

I look forward to a different time ahead, a wonderful time together, the fulfilment of a wish we both have and the promise we have made to each other, it is more than a consolation, it is a destination of good, wonderful and amazing things, I can hold on, he can hold on, we can hold on.

Thought Picnic: Leaving Reality for Virtuality

Aware to observe

There is a constant battle between being able to observe and being aware of ones surroundings. One will suppose awareness aids observance but that is the subject of some other research.

Touch is taking over the world, whilst Bill Gates promised information at our fingertips, he was at that time thinking of keyboards and screens – the times have moved on.

In all, there is much information garnered from touch but I find more of this when travelling not at the fingertips but at the touch of the thumb.

A touch of the distracted

In most cases, I will interact with my mobile phone holding it in one hand and navigating with the finger of the other hand. Too many cannot be bothered; they hold the phone and contrive the contortions of the phalanges to get the thumb of the same hand to work their phones.

In the process they get so engrossed in that activity completely oblivious of their surroundings and the people around them where they sit, where they stand or even when they walk. They are the most irksome when that is done riding their bikes as the handling of the bike almost makes me wish a very murky ditch is ready to break their fall.

Too many times I have boarded public transport and if anyone has a touch-to-interact mobile phone they are probably in that parallel universe absent to the present and the realities around them. It has become a societal nuisance for the want of a better description and it is likely to get worse.

Failing to learn

One cannot entirely relate this to poor attention spans or a general lack of awareness but I have hardly seen anyone on our Amsterdam Tram System who has cottoned on to the fact that if the push buttons at the exit doors are pressed to inform the driver to halt at the next stop and the lights are blinking, once the tram stops and the driver activates the doors, there is no need to press that button again, the door will sure open.

Maybe it is something about connecting the dots of events around you and paying heed to your surroundings but people have become automatons driven by touch with no other sensory perception utilised to show that the person exists with time, space, motion and interaction.

Dangers of this

These intra-personalised worlds of being oblivious cannot be to the benefit of our communities the worst situation being we may never be able to depend on eye witnesses and where help should be provided they are probably recording the circumstance to share on YouTube.

Besides our ability to appreciate beauty and take in our environments is lost to virtual worlds of virtual friends in virtual conversations doing virtually nothing for the enhancement of our realities.

We need to rollback these digital influences and get back to being social animals again – how we go about this, I would not know but the danger does loom and it will be more serious than depicted here.