Social Silence
I am a person who spent most of my life interacting with others. My job was to learn and pass on that learning to the people that I worked with. I never realized how much being with people was part of my life. Some of it was work-related and some of it was just being social. Then came that time of my life when most of my interactions went silent. I was no longer part of a group, my interactions with people decreased incredibly, and my life took a major change. No, I’m not talking about the COVID epidemic, though that intensified the silence, it was my retirement from teaching.
When you are in a profession, in my case teaching, for over 33 years, you are used to working with kids and others pretty much every day. And then it abruptly stops, the silence is intense. Not something that I was ready for.
My wife still worked 5 days a week and I did get involved in other things. I volunteered for the Red Cross, found part-time work for BOCES as a Model Schools educational technology trainer, and got some storytelling gigs, but for the most part, my everyday get-togethers with people that I was used to with colleagues and kids stopped. As time moved on and my volunteer and BOCES work began to dwindle, I decided to go back to my original school district and substitute teach. This was a temporary fresh boost against the silence and quietness I was experiencing outside my home life. I became part of a number of writing groups like the one I’m writing this for, where I was welcomed and could interact with others on a more or less weekly basis. This was a shining light that broke through that silence barrier.
And then, of course, COVID hit.
For the past 2 years, most of my interactions have been virtual. I have virtual writing groups, virtual storytelling groups, and virtual interactions with some of the people in my school setting.
I do get to spend more time writing and working on stories and music and other things, however, it is done in the solitude of my home. My wife still works 4 days a week and our get-togethers with friends are somewhat limited. I await the day that this silence can once again be broken, letting the flow of interactions on an in-person level becomes a reality, as I think we all do.
Until then, let us all raise a glass of whatever it is you want to be drinking, and hope that that day will come sooner than later.
