New Friends Amid Covid-19

Making friends was among my semi-annual initiatives, something pursued half-heartedly.  Ordinarily friends evolve from direct personal contact.  You join an organization, select somebody from it, share a joint project, have coffee or come over for dinner.  Facebook creates the illusion of friends, people who are really contacts, people who express themselves but never really converse. Osher Institute's value for seniors like me has been to create personal immersion as will as challenging intellect.  There are chairs in the lounges, round cafeteria tables far too large to eat alone at peak times.  Yet, there is also a book on one of my college reading lists called The Lonely Crowd.  It reviewed the evolution of the other-directed person, one who buys what is advertised, votes with the majority, attends religious gatherings more for the comradery than the elevation of inner spirit.  This has dominated culture but at the price of inner development.  Personal friendships offer a bridge between conformity to achieve acceptance and the development of inner strength that justifies the friendship.

Covid-19 has forced social distance, with a screen via Facebook or Zoom as a rather poor surrogate.  Ideas in real time get exchanged. but not as immediate verbal offer and respond.  Interactions via classes or seminars are structured.  We can drink coffee while we are doing this, but we cannot share coffee.  Attending Holy Day services and one shabbat service in person affirmed that the formality could be preserved but it also exposed the importance of kiddush or brief agenda-free chats while walking to our cars.  We still encounter cashiers in the stores, maybe medical staff when we get seriously ill, but rarely peers.  We have become The Lonely Crowd.