While flipping through a magazine this lazy Sunday afternoon, I saw an article entitled, Five Ways To Feel Closer To Others. They are: (1) Read to a loved one. (2) Be a good neighbor. (3) Shower friends with small presents. (4) Start a gratitude chain. (5) Hang on to what you’ve learned. It seems our awareness of these things has intensified during the pandemic isolation of the past year. More time at home has, hopefully, increased reading to our loved ones. I live in a neighborhood where we often ask each other if anything is needed when going to the market. I hope more people are communicating with their neighbors to this extent! My way of showering friends with small presents has been to send, by snail mail, cards, short notes, and articles from my favorite news magazine. It’s nice to receive “real” mail, don’t you think? The magazine's idea of a gratitude chain is interesting. By this, they mean for family and friends to start a group email with gratitude expressed and shared regularly. Then we have, “hang on to what you’ve learned” — hum, what does that mean? They are saying we must be attuned to each others’ nonverbal cues. It’s easy to be distracted during conversations, not realizing what a person actually means. In this day and age of instant communications and misinterpreted conversations, I want to be more aware of reading the messages from people's eyes, their tone of voice, or posture — the things we must notice in order to see what’s behind the mask. Thanks for listening while I talk these things out and think of ways I can be more effective in daily interactions. We all want to be closer to others, even when we’re far away!
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