Opinion | Let’s Get Rid of Social Distancing

I used to work as a hospice chaplain. My days consisted of visiting with people who were given a terminal diagnosis. I would sit in the living rooms of families helping them communicate their feelings to their loved one or just simply help them tell stories to one another. The most common comment I heard over and over was, “I just wish I had more time.”

The more I heard this phrase, the more I began to think about what people actually meant. Did people mean more time with their loved one would minimize the pain of loss because they got the time they felt like they needed? Is there a minimum relational time metric that needs to be met to feel like there is enough time? 

Humans are designed for relationships. Yet, it feels like time is the enemy of relationships. When my wife and I started dating in college, I couldn’t wait to see her at the end of my day. Our first summer as a couple, my wife returned to her home town 7 hours away. Every passing day that summer seemed more painful without her. Time was the enemy because all I wanted was time with her. The days on the calendar could not move fast enough. If you’ve ever been in love, you know what I am talking about.

I was in Lodwar, Kenya, when I began to realize how serious COVID-19 was going to be. The United States restricted all travel from Europe into the United States about halfway through the workshop we were teaching. Our globalized world was in the process of social distancing. A few days after arriving home, everything was shut down in our hometown of Chico, CA. The normally-busy college town I live in was quiet. There was noticeably less traffic on the roads, businesses were closed, and there was no toilet paper on the shelves of my local Target.

As we have been socially distancing to protect the vulnerable people around us, I wonder what the consequences of social distancing will be. Is there a relational metric of time we are not meeting as we distance from one another? As we have been distant from one another, I’ve realized it’s not time we are missing with one another--it’s a lack of depth. We gain depth in our relationships through being intentional with the time we have. As a hospice chaplain, I helped people be intentional with their loved ones with the time they had left.

The phrase social distancing is a marketing phrase to get people to not be physically close to one another. As we are physically distant from each other, we need to find ways to be intentionally social with one another to develop depth in our relationships. 

When we look at the civil unrest we’re experiencing in the U.S. maybe it’s because we have been socially-distancing ourselves long before COVID-19, and we lack the relational depth to interact with one another. It’s through intentional time that we develop bonds of trust and empathy with one another. We’ve had all the time in the world to develop and strengthen relationships, but we have been socially distancing ourselves long before we were told to stay home. Robert Putnam writes:

“Surveys of average Americans in 1965, 1975, and 1985, in which they recorded every single activity during a day--so-called "time-budget" studies--indicate that since 1965 time spent on informal socializing and visiting is down (perhaps by one-quarter) and time devoted to clubs and organizations is down even more sharply (by roughly half). Membership records of such diverse organizations as the PTA, the Elks club, the League of Women Voters, the Red Cross, labor unions, and even bowling leagues show that participation in many conventional voluntary associations has declined by roughly 25 percent to 50 percent over the last two to three decades. Surveys show sharp declines in many measures of collective political participation, including attending a rally or speech (off 36 percent between 1973 and 1993), attending a meeting on town or school affairs (off 39 percent), or working for a political party (off 56 percent).”

We have been socially distancing long before COVID-19. The fact that I can tell you the order of the apps on the home screen of my iPhone but don’t even know the name of my neighbors speaks to my expertise in social distancing. Or maybe the amount of lines I can quote from The Office is proof that I have social distancing skills.

Let’s stop social distancing and be intentional about developing deeper relationships as we are physically distant from one another.