When did having ‘your 5 a day‘ become a mantra, likewise your 10,000 steps? They’re all just ideas in the public consciousness that are just out there, and maybe we adjust our behaviour a little because we are aware that this is something we all SHOULD be doing.
I think it’s time for new one to launch into the ether and it’s
5 human interactions a day
Though it may need a snappier title. How about
‘Hi -5!’??
Human Interactions x 5. Any suggestions?
It is becoming so very easy to spend days at a time without any kind of human interaction. You can self-serve at the supermarket and an increasing number of high street shops. We can collect and drop off our parcels at click and collect points. Getting a GP appointment is so difficult now that most people will call on doctor Google rather than call the surgery. We have our faces in our phones in queues and waiting rooms so we don’t chat to strangers. We mostly buy our train tickets on line now, and we don’t even need to speak to the bus driver if we pay contactless. All these little cuts: the self service, the removal of ticket offices at railway stations – they’re all one more human interaction taken away. We’re going to forget how to do it.
My Dad says that socialising is a muscle, and the less we use it the more difficult it becomes. It’s not right, it’s damaging us. Both our mental health as individuals and our society.
I have 3 children. My eldest is 17 and, just as I was at the same age, she’s shy and will avoid talking to strangers. I remember becoming aware of how she was withdrawing over lock-down. She, like lots of kids, was reluctant to go back to school when the time came. She’d forgotten how to be around people. There were consequences for children her age. It changed them. They learned how to navigate the world without having to deal with people. It’s that age group that I see with big head phones or ear buds, shutting out the world.
But it’s my age group too. I look at my phone too much, but I am making a concerted effort to stop. I made a pact with my little sister at the beginning of the year to replace phones with books. She’s doing way better than me, but I’m trying.
Last week was the ‘back-to school shopping trip’. School shoes and stationery – we always have fun. Not the shoes bit, but the stationery bit. And we always have lunch out, with cake. It’s part of the ritual. Of the 25 people on the station platform, I’d say 15 were on their phones. On the train it was worse – it always is. But when I got on the train an older man made some comment about my son’s hat; said he looked like Peter from The Railway Children. So we talked all the way to Rochdale about the film, and then old TV shows like Porridge, and Last of the Summer Wine (I’m not that old, but it’s something I remember watching with my Dad and my Grandad), and how David Wilde was in both. Then he got off and there was a lady with a figity dog, and we talked about kids going off to University. On the way home the train was silent until it broke down, at which point me and all the kids got talking to a sound engineer about music, and recording the individual strings of a grand piano so an electric piano could sound like one.
The point I’m making is that the less we interact with people, the easier it is to view everyone with suspicion, but that most people are nice and have something interesting to say. Little human interactions, those outside our familiy and our friends, mean we might chat to someone with whom we don’t agree on some things. Maybe on big, political things. But we might come away thinking that, though we don’t have a lot in common, they were okay – quite decent really. And maybe they might think the same about you.
So what I propose is this: Try to have at least 5 human interactions a day. Unless you’re really in a hurry, queue for the cashier in the supermarket. Go to the post office rather than booking your parcels to be collected. Talk to someone in a queue. It doesn’t have to be deep and meaningful. Just say hello. I think speaking to a real person on the phone should count too, but not voice notes. Conversations have to be two way.
I feel that we are sleepwalking into something frightening, and I want to stop it before we can’t go back. This is important.
I wrote this over a week ago and haven’t posted it because I didn’t know what images to put with it. I still don’t know! So here’s a nice painting from 2018 called ‘A Break in the Clouds’. It’s my running painting. I painted it because I did the couch to 5k, and then discovered fell running, which changed everything for the better.
Couch to 5K. There’s another mantra.
But the new 5 a day is talking to people. Please talk to someone about it.
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