Heard of Six degrees of Separation? We couldn’t be blamed if we thought it had something to do with COVID or maybe it does…
Picture courtesy @ Alec Benjamin, song "Six Feet Apart "
In 1929, Hungarian author Karinthy introduced a concept that the modern world was 'shrinking' because of the ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. Six degrees of separation is the idea that came up from Karinthy’s theory that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. Some call it ‘The 6 Handshakes Rule’.
Then came, Internet & Travel ! We found out that friendship networks could grow larger and across greater distances. Today, almost everyone in the world is connected and thanks to social media the connectedness gets tighter and richer each day. In 2016, researchers at Facebook reported that it had reduced the chain length of its members to 3.5 degrees of separation. They predicted that if the trend continues, then by the time FB reaches all 7.4 billion of us, the range would fall between an average of just 1 and 2 degrees of separation!
We were all steadily cruising to reduce this ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ to ‘One Degree’ and then COVID happened! Our lives became 6 ft apart !
Justin Baldoni's beautiful movie called Five Feet Apart about Stella Grant, a cystic fibrosis patient who actively uses social media to cope with her illness and tries to live a normal life. She meets another CF patient, William "Will" Newman, at the hospital. Now, CF patients are strictly kept six feet apart to reduce the risk of cross-infection. Stella is determined to follow the rules and initially dislikes Will, who likes to break the rules and take dangerous risks sometimes.They secretly go on a date and fall in love. In one of the scenes, Stella says “I am living for my treatments, instead of doing treatments so that I can live”. (No spoilers!)
I found asking myself, ‘Don’t we have to look at six feet apart as a treatment so that we can live after it is over?’ And that is the frustration that’s evident amongst us being in the lockdown.
Scientifically, being six feet apart plays a huge role in containing the virus but then, how do we take care of our want to reach out, the human need to be hugged, touched. We have developed languages and emotional expressions through physical touch! Pages of research have been dedicated to list how human touch is the foundation of our existence even more in a tele-connected world!
The new normal looks like it might take away the joy of meeting someone we have known electronically in person, the familiarity of a ‘jhappi’, the connect of a chest bump, the excitement of finding new people who vibe, the trust of a firm handshake, the thrill of meeting a stranger and becoming forever friends, the adventure of accidentally falling in love!
Will these Six Feet Apart will affect our Six Degrees of Separation?
COVID looks unconquerable, but then so did Cholera, Spanish Flu, Plague when they appeared. The humanist in me thinks that some of us and gradually more of us will becomes ‘Williams’. We will carefully yet dangerously break rules, to fall in love, to find the human touch, to seek the hand shake for which we closed the distances which were 6 feet apart. Cautiously, stepping into moments that connect, choosing dangerous over careless, finding the ‘Will’ in us!
Leaving you with few verses from a beautiful song by Alec Benjamin “Six feet Apart” that i discovered and wrote this blog:
So I think I'll build a time machine and go back to a time
When we didn't need to measure six feet on the ground
And it hurts to know just how lovely you are
And be too far away to hold but close enough to break my heart
Like a star, out in the cosmos
Can't touch, the beauty I see
That's how, it all feels to me
So far, so far but so close
That's how, it feels at six feet
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