From Social Distancing to Social Isolation.
An Unwarranted Journey.

The first month of lockdown had a particular quality to it. Everyone was scared together, which meant everyone was together. My WhatsApp groups... school friends, college friends, colony friends, startup friends... all of them lit up in April like they had not in years.

Then... slowly... that stopped.

That observation, when it landed, landed hard. Not because the calls stopped... things stop all the time, habits break, life interrupts. But because I had not noticed. I was not missing it. I had become comfortable with sitting at my home and being happy or sad only for myself and my family... with the rest of the world at arm's length and the arm getting longer.

We were taught, as children, that humans are social animals. That lesson felt like a statement of fact, not something that required effort to maintain. You were social because that was what humans were; it was built in, like breathing. What Covid revealed, quietly and over time, is that it is not built in. It is built. Every day. Through the small acts of calling, meeting, sharing a table, showing up. And when those acts stop for long enough... the instinct itself starts to fade.

I do not think this was anyone's intention. Not the government's, not ours. The distancing was a public health measure; it was right and it was necessary. But somewhere in the two years of it, the distancing became the default. What was a response to a crisis became the shape of everyday life. We forgot to unlearn it when the crisis passed.

If you are reading this and thinking of someone you have not called in a while... someone whose last message to you sits unanswered in a group you have muted... maybe this is the push. Not because of any grand reason. Just because the bench in the park was not built to sit empty.