Through the Looking Glass

To call my dad a late adopter of technology is an understatement.

For the record, he is now a multi-year owner of a smartphone, has Uber installed on said smartphone (you’re welcome), and is going to use Zoom for the first time next week. And it’s awesome. But for most of his life, especially when we were kids, tech adoption was not a thing.

The example I remember most clearly was his refusal to get a camcorder. Which, in the early ‘90s, was unthinkable. I remember the moment during my childhood when, the second my teammates or I started our routine on one of four gymnastics apparatus, every parent’s arms immediately moved in unison as they lifted their camcorders to capture us.

Except my dad. He never got one. Never wanted one. Never recorded a single routine, so far as I remember. And he had a reason: he didn’t want to watch us through a lens. Didn’t want to flip out the tiny monitor screen and watch us triumph in pixelated glory (or fall on our ass, mercifully blurred). Somehow that seemed less immediate. A little distorted. Not quite the real thing. Here these other parents were, focused on capturing footage to watch later, instead of just watching…now.

At this moment many of us are living the entirety of our lives on screens. Which shouldn’t seem like that much of a departure. Between working on our computers, texting with our friends, gaming in our leisure hours, getting a comparative sense of ourselves (despite our healthier instincts) by compulsively scrolling social media feeds, and sourcing potential dates by swiping left or right…the majority of us were spending the majority of our days on screens already.

Turns out the difference between “majority of the time” and “all the time” borders on existential. What used to feel like a choice now feels like the absence of personal agency. Our self-directed way of life has somehow morphed into a cage. We’re all trying to make the best of it. Zoom work meetings. Virtual happy hours. Family game nights that happen on a Brady Bunch-style laptop matrix instead of at a multi-generational dinner table. At first it was novel and kind of fun. 

Now it’s fine.

Next week and the week after – who knows.  

Taken at face value, the move from in-person to on-screen is just a shift in perspective. Our friends and family are still there. Our jokes are still there. Our opinions are still there. But our perspective – our ability to understand who we are and where we fit and what we believe in relation to the tribes we align with and the general population we’re a part of – I wonder what will happen when we meet each other again on the other side of the looking glass.

I wonder about real-world perspective. I’m fascinated to watch men walking down the street these days. I watch them watch the person approaching from the other direction. Are they getting too close? WHY are they walking in the middle of the sidewalk instead of further to the left? Why aren’t they keeping their distance…are they going to hurt me? Are they trying to hurt me?!?

I wonder if, after this, men will understand what it can feel like to be a woman walking down the street on a normal day. Maybe in a tougher part of town. Or a little too long after sunset. That existential discomfort you’re feeling? That maybe-irrational but very real fear? That’s it, kid. So maybe this is a silver lining chance to cultivate some empathy.

But I also worry about empathy in general once screens finally dissolve into real life again. Because empathy relies on relative perspective. Can we imagine ourselves from someone else’s point of view? Can they imagine us from theirs?

Over the past couple of weeks my social media screens have shown me how human perspective shifts in the context of a pandemic. In this case, tone shifts with geography. We start with memes and jokes and downplaying the whole Coronavirus thing as overblown ridiculousness.

Then stuff starts to get real. Restaurants shutter. Businesses close. None of the places in walking distance, or driving distance, have toilet paper. Friends of friends start getting laid off. 

Then our posts stop joking and start instructing: “Guys, the responsible thing to do is stay at home.” And then lecturing: “Here are all the charts and graphs to substantiate why you should stay at home.” And then shaming: “You’re out in the world? What is WRONG with you, you monster?!?”

I get it. I did it. You can watch sentiment topple like dominoes and tone mutate to mimic the national heat map of reported cases. We go from watching on a screen – Less immediate. A little distorted. Not quite the real thing. – to getting phone calls from college buddies who are doctors and nurses running out of protective gear. We start getting pinged by texts from teammates who have a friend whose parent was just hospitalized and might need a ventilator. All of a sudden that Tinder profile that claimed “toilet paper and hand sanitizer for days” went from ‘Clever’ to ‘You’re a F*cking Moron.’

Right to Left.

“Maybe We’d Get Along” to “Never.”

In a life lived on screens, it can be a short walk from harmless joke to lasting judgment.

I worry about our relationships that have been reduced from majority real-world interactions to Zoom- and social media-only. I feel it in myself already. Posts from people I love, capturing them cooking at home with their kids and grandchildren. Doing body weight workouts in the backyard with their boyfriends. Buddies making videos set in swank home gyms, showcasing their partners and their dogs, all of them sweating in Lulu Lemon head to toe. And ordering us – ordering me – Don’t Be Selfish! Stay at Home!

I “like” their posts and I heart their Instagrams. But want to know what I’m really thinking? GFY.

Which is bad. And totally unfair. Because what I know is we’re all dealing with our own shit. And despite what it looks like on a social media screen, each of our situations comes with downside and struggles and unanticipated hardships. This moment in time feels horrendous for everybody.

But I worry that our screens – our camcorder-only view of the people we used to be physically close to, warts and all there for direct observation – make our shared experience in all this more difficult than ever to see. Which makes it more difficult to believe. Which makes it impossible to feel.

And that’s when empathy goes away.   

Oof. I didn’t set out for this to be such a downer. But, I guess this is maybe a moment for me to take some of my own medicine. Today I felt crappy. Not for any particular reason. I’m super lucky. I’m healthy and so is my family so far. We all have our jobs so far. I’m even one of those assholes who posted about my erg arriving a day later than expected last week. So please know that I know that “poor me” is not a thing.

But despite all that objective good, today felt bad.

For a lot of other people it felt bad.

But tomorrow might feel better. Especially if I can wake up, get outside, and just feel it. No photo, no caption, no checking in to see how many likes it got.

Striving to emulate the best of my dad has yet to steer me wrong. So tomorrow I’m going to wake up with the goal of opening my eyes, and just watching Now.

 Sweet dreams, friends. And wishing you a happier tomorrow.