The lost art of getting together
Something incredible happened.
People came together, ate, drank, and enjoyed one another's company.
It was like we were starving and we came to the table feasting.
It wasn’t obvious at first.
The source of this vigorous “hunger”.
And then it hit,
ike a ton of bricks.
It all started as a sad story, a terrible thing we all lived through and shared (from a distance), but then it ended and some part inside all of us stayed milling about in our own living rooms and private offices longer than we needed to. But then one day, we remembered that Covid has been over for years now, and that somehow, out of habit, or perhaps just because we've gotten so good at doing it online, we all forgot how to simply: get together.
Let your imagination stand with me at the front door to a sunlit dining room, tight, but magnificent with windows, wood, stone and sunlight. People start coming in, one-by-one, couples holding hands, friends swaggering up with big smiles. It's a personal tradition to give a genuine hug to the people who are willing to accept one, most do these days. The warm sun greeting them as well, ushering them through the doors where a table-full of our favorite small gifts lay out for folks to take and enjoy. The sound of the shaker and clinking of the stirring stick used to make everyone’s favorite drink form a sort of “tap-tap-tapping”, like a half-bent conductor calling a disorderly jazz symphony to attention. Then the volume picks up. As the room fills, a palpable energy starts to buzz and what was meant to be a room for thirty people swells to nearly fifty. Walking five steps takes you into a whole new conversation. Jokes and laughter, sincere catchups, new friendships sparking. The hours were built on moments like this.
It felt criminal to break the swell. We were there to talk “business” and if you’re going to expense a thing like this, you’ve got to make sure it’s a business event. But thankfully, even the speech-giving devolved into something more like a three-part harmony of gratitude, excitement and vision-casting. The jazz ensemble didn’t end, just quieted down to few instruments and then like a dramatic pause, we all gave thanks, gave a cheers, and then the clamoring noise re-charged as plates were filled, drinks re-poured and seats taken until the deafening hum once again made every word nearly inaudible, but every expression all the more beautiful.
We stayed until nearly midnight.
Departing was all joy and a little bit of pain.
Folks tumbled out with flowers in their hands, with totes full of gifts dangling
We gave jovial but genuine hugs.
Shared more thanks and gratitude.
Looked one another in the eye and said,
“How soon can we do this again?”
Why spend all this descriptive energy on what most would inanely dub an “investor appreciation dinner” or even worse, a “business networking event”? Because two very important things have happened since those jargons were coined.
First
Someone named these things before we all lost years of communal living during covid. That was only a few years ago, remember, and last time I listened to any book on the psychology of mental trauma (like last week) the synopsis is that it takes lengthy time and intention for our minds and bodies to heal. We are still all healing, some of us more and some of us less, but what was once just a way to get more out of the people you know is being redeemed into a healing practice. I pretty much don’t care what the excuse is, and I don’t care how badly you name it, whether it’s networking, a kid’s birthday party, a funeral or a wedding, we are all in desperate need of human to human connection in real time, with no screens intercepting all the profound intangibles that make us fulfilled by knowing one another. The richness of in-person interaction needs to be valued appropriately again. Which leads me to the next point.
Second
This one hits home: technology has sedated our “togetherness”.
On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell shouted “Mr. Watson, come here!” into the first ever telephone. In 1994, Connectix launched QuickCam, the first commercial webcam (a real piece of junk by today’s standards). Linked-in was launched on May fifth of 2003 and Zoom came to life in 2011. For the preceding twelve thousand years we human beings were relegated to writing or hieroglyphs, smoke, flag and mirror signals, and (you guessed it), face-to- face interaction. I cannot believe, and I witnessed on October first, that despite how we have made relationships a zone of efficiency, we have not really deleted and replaced millenia of essential human habit and need with technology.
I’m on the phone and videoconferencing and linkedin-ing all week long. I am fully embracing these efficiencies, but at what point do we put down the screen and pay the ticket to walk into the jazz-bar and grab a drink and say hello to someone we know? Have we really forgotten the musicality of conversation, the rhythm of an actual handshake?
I’m here to remind myself of this.
Maybe it reminds you, too.
That at the dawn of humanity, we were told that it is not good for mankind to be alone. Isolation kills us, and what I saw in front of my eyes was the re-ignition of life and soul and body. I could not possibly have gotten drunk on old-fashioneds any more than I was drunk on the people and faces of this moment. Norman MaClean is famous for saying that “Art does not come easy,” and there is truth here in part–not all art does come easy–but the art of getting together is probably the easiest art of them all. None of us have lost it, truly. We just put it too far out of sight for a few years.
You’re welcome to dust it off.
Can’t wait to really see you, soon.
