Have We Lost Serendipity?

I’ve never had any problems meeting people. I’m not really an extrovert though. I’m more than content to burrow away alone for days working on something. In fact when I was in grade school, one of my favorite past times was reading the encyclopedias on the living room floor instead of going outside and playing with my friends. That said, sometimes I yearn for social contact — even if it’s random at the grocery store.

Since 1992, I’ve worked pretty much out of my house, wherever that may have been. I moved around a lot so I didn’t have a robust long-term Middle Ring (neighbor “friends”). I had to recreate my Middle Ring every few years. I invested time in carefully curated Front Porches; coffee shops and restaurant/bars (when I was still drinking). This was my way of engaging with the people who lived around me. My old school friends, the ones most people keep in contact with, live lives I have little knowledge of. Maintaining close long term relationships has never been a strength of mine. In fact I’d say it’s a weakness. I instead prided myself in being adaptable and capable of creating new friendships — often burning hot and then fading away. They’re kind of like platonic gender-neutral one-night stands; or at best — flings. Now being 65, I’m kind of stuck with this modus operandi. The memories of the many “good times” are till there and they cover a plethora of interesting exciting situations and players. Why didn’t I nurture these “one-night stands” and reap the benefits of more lasting tenures? Or for that matter, why didn’t I maintain relationships with my old friends from high school and college? I don’t have an answer.

Recently I moved back down to the Los Angeles area after a decade in a small town in Montana — caring for my parents who have now since died. I’m coming to realize that setting up my Middle Ring, as I frequently did before — will not be nearly as easy. First without the neighborhood bars, I’ll be eliminating a not insignificant portion of my prospects (don’t judge me :)). I knew that coming back would involve work; and I’m cool with that. I still had my coffee shops — so I thought.

I don’t need to go into detail, as I have numerous other times — but my health is posing a problem too. My compromised immune system and the never-ending threat of COVID is always present (at least in my mind). But as with the bars, I anticipated this. What I didn’t anticipate is the change in social climate. Being outwardly friendly is an outlying behavior these days. A simple “excuse me” by me as I step in front of someone in a grocery store isle seldom warrants a response, not even a grunt. And then there are phones — and they have replace the physical world for so many. Regardless where they are, their virtual world rules supreme. It’s like their physical existence is little more than a nuisance.

But even with anti-social behavior being the norm (not passing judgement — but it is what it is), there are just less people out in places where you could run into them. Fewer people and fewer of those who have any desire to interact — leaves me with a stark realization that building a Middle Ring this time around will be very difficult. I fear I’ll reach a point where it doesn’t seem worth it anymore. The prospect of isolation has become real.

I wonder how many are out there are like me. How many have few close friends and family and depend on their Middle Ring only to be seeing it vanish in front them with little prospect of being replenished. Local watering holes are vanishing and being replaced by chain fast food that cater to delivery and drive-through crowds — which is most everyone these days. There’s places to meet people, but you have to plan ahead to do it. Serendipity — what’s that? Organized groups still exist of course, but most are now online, with structures adverse to any accidental interaction. The “art of meeting people” is like an ancient language that’s fading away as the last of those who speak it die off.

Isolation isn’t something that all of a sudden happens. It’s gradual like a frog in the hot water. He doesn’t realize the water is getting hotter until it’s too late to save himself. Encounters with other people, especially with those we don’t know, are becoming less and less, until they’ll become none. Random greetings and small acts of kindness are becoming fewer and take more intent. No more greeting a stranger at the grocery store or complimenting someone you don’t know on your walking path.

This lack of human contact is making us depressed and angry. Human are social animals. You can’t just pivot with the illusion that TikTok and texting will fill the void. The only people we communicate with are others like us with the same opinions and same politics. Many of them are going through the same thing and are angry too. The water is getting hotter — oblivious to us all.

Our world has changed. The COVID pandemic has thrown us into a new paradigm. Delivery and drive-throughs are the norm now. The workplace has also changed. If remote work is available, it’s taken advantage of. Having work friends is no longer a given, let along getting together with them — especially when they live a thousand miles from you. Online activity is our social life — whether it be Facebook and TikTok scrolling. Most of the time there’s little social to it though. All we do is stare at memes as the anonymous posts run past us.

If COVID and social media wasn’t enough to isolate us, our economy sure isn’t helping. It seems there are invisible forces changing our physical infrastructure to keep us in our houses and our cars. Restaurants are populated by little more than employees, employees who prepare food for you to eat at home. Ghost kitchens are now a thing.

I don’t want to give up on our physical places though. I want to be able to just get of the house and see people; maybe even talk to them. Not about anything specific. Just talk. The places we can do this is our locally-owned business community. These are the cool places, not whitewashed chain stores and restaurants, void of personality and any semblance of difference. These businesses and their owners (and long-term employees) are the foundation of our communities. Without them we’d live in a hell populated by corporate chains — our individuality being replaced by a movie set from Edward Scissorhands. We need to help them find a reason to embrace in-person interaction again. We need to show them we need them to be Front Porches again — places that nurture socialization and civic self-efficacy.

We won’t get everyone on board, including many local businesses that should and we truly miss. We might get some though — enough that people like me at least have an option to exercise our right to serendiptitous engagement :). I have to believe an underlying reason for our political hatred and hatred of pretty much everything and everyone not us — is fueled by isolation, the decline of serendipity and losing these places of random engagement. With no chance of actually meeting one of these “not exactly like us” — we turn to jealousy, blame, rage and eventually hate. We harden our positions by surrounding ourselves online with pseudo-friends who stoke our hatred. Neither side is exempt.

Sharing a common physical space with someone, even if its only for a moment can be disarming and maybe even empathetic. Unless we take these steps first though, no amount of formal talking will amount to anything but a competition in a mock debate; irrelevant and without any resolution. Resolution lies on the other side of that door to our local Front Porch. Show them it’s worth it to keep that door open.

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