A couple nights ago I went to a talk at the local campus Oratory and convinced some friends to go too. It was a talk on faith and reason, and was academic in nature. It went over my head a little, but I still had a great time and felt like I got my intellectual culture for the month. There was also a reception afterwards where we could drink, eat, and talk.
When I told a friend about the talk, he said, "Or you could just read the source material" and sent me a link to the encyclical by St. Pope John Paul II. Well, sure, I thought. "But then I wouldn't get to see and speak with other people...which is my favorite past time." I responded.
I used to go to the bars a lot in college and my twenties. I was more introverted then, so it wasn't always easy to muster up the resolve to go out. And if it was really about drinking, I could save 75% of what I was spending at the bar by picking up a six pack and drinking in my apartment.
But going to the bar (or out to eat, or a lecture you could zoom into) isn't really about the beer, or the food, or the content of the talk. It's about doing these things amongst other humans and feeding the social appetite. It's important, and fills something in us that hungers for this.
Even Mass fills this need. Of course our first priority is to worship God. But there is a communal element, which is why we don't worship isolated at home on the Sabbath, and why spiritual communions should be an exception, not a norm. We are not hermits; we are a collective as Catholics.
I was in the office yesterday and the dynamics of our workplace have irrevocably changed since COVID. Whereas we would be in 5 days a week, a dozen or so of us at one time, now I am in 3 days a week and there is maybe 3 or us there at a time. A third of our staff have gone fully remote, and the rest are 40% remote. We are "working alone" in many ways a man "drinks alone." "Why go the bar and spend $6 a bottle when I can pick up a case for $30? It's more efficient anyway." I was literally in a building all day yesterday with one other person. We're doing the work as a team...we're just not doing it together, physically.
This should be the subject of sociological studies for years to come. Personally, I go out of my way now to seek out social activities, and host them, as a matter of intentionality, so those muscles don't atrophy. There's something inefficient, local, less streamlined and messy about in-person interaction. But there's something vital about it too, which I think we have been missing in a post-COVID world, something we don't even realize we need until you haven't had it in a while.
Life isn't always meant to be 'optimized,' 'safe,' and 'more efficient.' There's value too in the messy in-person, the social space, the reading of body language and the engaging of the senses.
So go to the bar with some friends. Host a gathering. Attend a lecture in person. Go out to eat. For Pete's sake...live life in real time and real space. Otherwise you might lose that social muscle memory that makes us human at our core.
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