🤗 If anyone lives in a place where they don't have friendly encounters with neighbours when they step outside, please take a greeting:

1) Off to work? The energy rolling off you is *incredible*. I hope it carries you through a wonderful day.

2) Hey! That is a smashing colour on you. The fabric looks super comfortable, too. Rock on, you stylish beast.

3) What a gift to see your face again! It's been a bit, hasn't it? Hope everything's going great with the fam--and say hello to your dog for me!

Although I had a lovely round of chats coming back from the run, I also had one fellow who rushed from friendly chat around the tinto vendor to trying to get my number.

The trick with this type is that they're not all ill-intentioned. Many are just so unused to being seen that they don't have a fuller range of scripts. Ah! Feminized person talking to me! Must pursue!

I politely decline but keep the group chat going. Most then get over the initial brain spaz & everyone goes away feeling good. 👌

But I've sat with enough elderly and hurting folk (volunteering in Canada especially) to know how easy it is to lose those social scripts. Touch deprived, disconnected, caught up in one's thoughts...

It's very easy for us to feel invisible, and very hard to return again to the full fraternity of human beings to which we all belong.

May we always remember the times when we've needed others to help us learn how to "people" again. There will surely come times when we need another's kindness anew.

@MLClark I am beginning to understand that we fade to invisibility as we age. It’s a very difficult process to stop, particularly in an age of small families.

@TheresaVermont

An age of small families, and also a culture (especially in the West) of shuttling people off into age-divided living-communities.

I remember a study years ago that found a 2-9 year increase in lifespan, and related quality of life metrics, for elderly folk integrated with kindergarten cohorts more often. We NEED each other. We're animals, and a group species to boot.

But what an estranging world we've built for ourselves instead--and at such unnecessary cost to our wellness.

@MLClark We moved to an area closer to family in NYC, but one couple moved and the other has no time. Old friends here are consumed with their grandkids; in 2.5 years, we've had dinner with them twice. My son and his wife visited once; they moved to CA and are now moving to Spain. Close nephew and his wife have been here twice. One family gathering at the camp to say goodbye to dying BIL. That's the sum total of our social connections in our 2.5 years.

@TheresaVermont

That kind of isolation creeps into the bones one unassuming step at a time.

I sorely hope this "quiet phase" passes into something new - new friends, new activities, new opportunities - but either way, I hope you're always able to be kind with yourself, whenever you feel that these disconnects are weighing on your mood, stress levels, and overall quality of life.

We're all doing the best we can with what we've got, even though we all deserve so much more. 🫂💛

@MLClark Yes, it is one step at a time. I remember my mom, in her early 90s, asking me "Why am I still here? All my family and friends are gone." I think it's a slow and unavoidable process. And don't ask why I didn't count as "family" in that moment, but it wasn't meant as mean, just her connections were no longer there.