Personal space

I have spoken before about my view of the streetcar stop across the street from the window where I often sit and pray. One day I suddenly noticed how the people waiting there were standing. It was almost as if someone had taken a tape measure and said to each one 'you stand here', then measured off another space and so on. There was virtually the same space between each person - roughly I would guess, about 5 feet. As more folks came there was a certain amount of shuffling done and though the space might get reduced there still tended to be an equal space between each one. Once I noticed this I began to see it every day and it was then I realized that it was probably an unconscious expression of the important need we human beings have for personal space.

It is true, isn't it, that most of us are very conscious when someone invades our personal space? We move back or away when someone we do not know comes too close. I suppose it derives from our animal nature - a kind of self protection. But I sense that for us it is valuable both as a physical and an emotional boundary. You see when there are couples or people who are clearly friends that the distance is much less and indeed, sometimes almost non-existent. We have to choose to let people close; we have to choose who we will be intimate with and possibly we both fear and resent someone who does not respect that. 


But that then led me to think about the many, many lonely people in our current society. So many are separated from family and roots that in previous times held people close (sometimes perhaps, too close?). Is the huge amount of recreational sex that has become such a part of the life of many a sign of this loneliness? Is that why we admit into the most intimate personal space we know, someone who is essentially a perfect stranger - someone we pick up at a party for instance? It seems likely to be a basically unsatisfying form of intimacy so why do we do it?  Perhaps it is that we are looking for someone who will say to us 'you matter', 'you are loved', you don't need to be lonely anymore.


But really, what can I or we do about it? This is a huge problem of an anonymous urban world that isolates people or casts them aside. I don't know for sure but what I think  I can think to do is to try to reach out a little more to the people around me who may need a word of love or encouragement because even the folks we know well can be feeling isolated or lonely or unheard. I am sure there is more to do as well and that I suspect, will present itself each day - waiting for my response.

This is a rather long reflection coming simply from observing folks standing at a streetcar stop waiting. But then, why not ponder and see where it goes?