Bridging a one-metre gap
People in London live in complete isolation from one-another. In a rush-hour underground carriage, bodies pressed against each other in the crush of a Central line commute, people couldn't be further apart.
On the tube last weekend, I saw a group of 3 get on together, and look for free seats such that they would be able to sit next to one-another. There were plenty of free seats, but nowhere were there three seats together. They ended up standing.
The reason they couldn't find 3 seats together was that all the people in the carriage had left an empty seat between them, spacing themselves out to maximise the emptiness around them. Everyone looked up when the group entered the carriage, everyone saw them looking around for seats together, and nobody offered to move.
Their personal exclusion zones were too important to sacrifice.
It's a strange phenomenon that can cause individuals - who under different circumstances might get along famously - to conscientously ignore each other for 15 minutes at a time while standing less than a foot apart in a confined space.
Try to catch someone's eye, and you're more likely to make them feel threatened or uncomfortable than anything else. Some take refuge behind books so as to avoid accidentally making contact with someone. Given that we have no personal physical space, a psychological space is created, within which no-one may enter, and which must be safeguarded by ignoring any attempt to make contact.
Having said that, I'm willing to bet that a fair number of people wish they weren't so completely isolated - it wears you down to be so surrounded by people and so completely alone. It brings to mind a quote from a film, that we Crash into each other just to feel something.
What does it take to thaw this societal hangup?
Briefly, after the attacks on the 7th July, people on the tube made eye contact. It was a weird time, but it felt as though the attacks had brought everyone together in some way. My theory is that they had given everyone the excuse they needed to make a connection, however frail and transitory, with the crowds around them, and for a moment the nameless mass of heaving bodies on the underground was actually made up of individuals - people acknowledged each other. It is a terrible shame that it faded, and a testament to how little the attacks really changed, and how much it takes to dent our self-imposed isolation.
There's a tribe in Africa who greet each other with their names, and the phrase, "I see you." This is a remarkable cultural feature. It represents a complete acknowledgement that there is another person here, and that you recognise them as an individual. It is the opposite of our own culture, where our interactions with other people treats them more like two-dimensional cardboard cutouts than real individuals.
Is there in that difference a testimony to something we've lost in the name of progress? Is it something we can recapture without sacrificing the progress itself? Is it something that can be done by individuals, acting alone? If so, how does my behaviour on the tube have to change in order for me to no longer be part of the problem? If you smile at a stranger, you do run the risk of making them uncomfortable, but perhaps that's their problem, and not something that should be allowed to make you less open to others.
So make an effort, and make eye contact with someone on the bus or tube, then smile at them, and don't judge their reaction, just do it for yourself.
Posted by nlvp at May 16, 2006 08:03 AM