Social Isolation

This was a difficult week.

It rained every single day, & then my only two pals in the area were MIA for various reasons.

And I ended up experiencing SOCIAL ISOLATION (intoned with a kind of echo chamber effect), which is different from garden variety lonesomeness: Lonesomeness feels like a temporary condition that is not your fault; SOCIAL ISOLATION is a disease of the elderly brought on by their own bad habits. Socially isolated people do not proactively build social connections! They do not join clubs, volunteer, wave the Stars & Stripes at community events! They don't strike up conversations with the harried checkout clerk at the Shop-&-Drop. If they do finally manage to capture the attention of a real human person, they natter on & on about some obscure rock star from the 1970s or their bursitis or how much stuff has changed in the last 50 years.

The absolute worst habit of the elderly, though, is that they are old.

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I suppose no one ever feels old, though when you look at them, you wonder: Why the hell not?

That person I catch a glimpse of in the mirror when I'm not mugging it up self-consciously? That's not me, that's my grandmother.

And I'm one of those old people who's in pretty good shape.

Thing is I probably have more friends than most people. Friends with whom I resonate on an intimate level and who have my back.

They just don't live here.

But, of course, I live here.

I make my most important social connections online, which is kind of an ageless milieu. My prose is sprightly; sprightly signals "young." I meet a lot of the people I bond with online, and those meetings often turn into friendships. I won't say "age" doesn't influence those friendships, but it's just one factor in a whole lot of factors: I am X years older than you, and now let's chatter about books and movies and music and the meaning of the Universe, your children and my children, shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages.

But here, I must make social connections the old-fashioned way, face-to-face. And whatever delusions I may have about my age-defying demeanor, I am clearly a member of the pariah tribe, the Senior Citizens.

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The irony about SOCIAL ISOLATION is that it feels like something you oughta be ashamed of, which, of course, is even more isolating. SOCIAL ISOLATION is sticky and heavy, and that weight makes it difficult to cleave to all those wholesome routines—exercise, engagement, good nutrition—that make you feel good about yourself.



All moot points today because (finally!) it's gorgeous & sunny out. And warm! And so, I am perfectly content.