Being Out of Touch

Recently my friend Maiga Milbourne posted on social media about realizing how much of life revolves around being with people and touching things (I’m paraphrasing her exact words here). It got me thinking about this as well - particularly in terms of the role of touch. I realized how much of my daily life, too, depends on touch, and how much I’m feeling literally out of touch. 

There are some obvious ones. I’m big on personal touch. I’m a big time hugger (with permission and where appropriate, of course). I was raised in a family of huggers, and physical closeness is something that’s always been a big thing for me. Of the five love languages, physical touch often ties for second. And to clarify, physical touch among love languages doesn’t just refer to the obvious (this is generally a family friendly blog) but touch as a way to express closeness of any kind. I’m the type that will link arms with friends or stand with our arms around each others’ waists or shoulders. It’s just how I interact with others and in the world. 

Ironically, I’m also a person that needs a lot of space, being an introvert, and sensory sensitivities mean that sometimes it’s difficult for me to deal with touch. Additionally, I’ve dealt with physical trauma in the past, so I understand the ways in which touch can be painful, both physically and emotionally, and I totally respect that. Despite this, though, I’m overall huge on touch, and not being able to hug family and friends, to be in proximity with them, even for this socially anxious introvert is tricky. 

Despite the obviousness of hugs and the like, it affects so much else. As a yoga teacher, I often provide hands adjusts and assists (again, with permission). Not only can it help assist form and deepening of the pose, it can help the student ground, and at least from my own experience as a student, it somehow helps me connect deeper to the pose - it’s like by connecting with another human, I connect more with myself, and the pose itself. It’s amazing what we can do with virtual yoga, but naturally, this physical touch element is missing. 

Aside from human to human contact, there’s so much that we touch in everyday life. There are things like picking out produce at the grocery store. While I always try to be cognizant of it, these days I definitely don’t want to pick something up, decide it’s not right, and put it back. The other day I found myself taking a pepper that looked a little past it’s prime upon closer inspection because I’d already touched it and felt like I should therefore take it “just in case”. Like, just in case I become sick and I’ve touched that pepper and unknowingly infected someone via the produce section at Whole Foods. There’s the touch of helping people. How often in daily life do we see a stranger struggling to open a door with their hands full, or carry something that looks heavy for them. Or a parent drops something without realizing it as they’re trying to juggle ten things in their hands and take care of their child. Our first instinct, or at least mine, is to run and try to help. Stand in their place and push open the door, help them carry one of the many items in their hand, help them lift that thing that looks too heavy, pick up that the parent dropped and return it to them. But right now, we can’t even get close enough to help, let alone physically touch the thing they were just touching. 

In our condo, there’s an agreement that when a package for someone is left in the front lobby (and therefore would be visible to anyone looking in), you bring it inside the second set of double doors, where the outside world can’t see it but other residents of the condo building can. Now, we have to be extra careful - who else touched this package? What if we move this package and then it turns out we get sick and we’ve unknowingly passed it along? I want to help out my neighbors and don’t want to unknowingly make them or myself sick in the process.

It’s amazing how much of our world revolves around touch, both the obvious human to human contact, and the less obvious human to object or human to object to human contact. So much of what we do on a regular basis involves directly or indirectly touching other people. And for a person whose so big into personal connection like me, the absence of that, the inability to help others, to be there for others through some sort of touch, is becoming increasingly noticeable. I’m so glad that today’s technology allows us to connect, to be together, even apart. But I, for one, cannot wait to hug my friends again, to help out my neighbors, to assist a stranger that needs it, to pick out vegetables in the supermarket without fear of unintentionally causing harm to myself and/or another. I hope that this lesson stays with me, that in the future I don’t take this ability to help through touch quite so much for granted.