Give Me My Personal Space
I’ve often wondered why some people are so approachable, and others make me want to step around them? Questions arise? Is personal space an actual human need? Just like living, breathing, moving? Is it like a colourless, shapeless, essential nothingness around you, enough of it if you’re lucky, confining and frustrating if you don’t?
Possibly the easiest way to think of your living space is to plunk yourself right into it like an object. Look at yourself in terms of your height, your depth plus width that you take up in your space. How much nothingness do you need around you to make you feel comfortable? As it differs from person to person, it seems to be very flexible.
The answer to this question of required space is different for each human. Maybe that is what being human really means. We have evolved over time to enjoy food, rest, private bodily functions. Basic stuff. For instance you don’t really think about what is needed to use a fork. But in order to do that without any kind of injury, there seems to be a need to extend our personal space around that fork. On it goes, this waxing and waning process, amorphous shaping every day, as we use our personal space.
An interesting thing to consider happens when you can’t live without an Apple Watch on your wrist, reminding you to get up from your TV to walk, or a Pelotin exerciser ordering you harshly to half kill yourself. (Amazingly, you pull out all the stops to obey these gadgets, but get quite offended if another human tries this with you!) So could it be online use of these things does not take consideration of another’s personal space, and therefore isn’t offensive? Come to think of it, we are already living in cyber space. Makes you wonder if this is why there seems to be a lack of humanity towards others as you take note of global pain today.
Extraordinary times are upon us. Various countries have dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic in different ways. Powerful variants have popped up, causing swift virus transmission, death, destruction. It is a worldwide crisis.
The need for personal space has been overshadowed by international lockdowns, suddenly jamming folks together unnaturally. Fear, anguish plus rage have been the result. Politicians have lost no time in stepping into weakened areas of space that present themselves.
It’s an uncomfortable, untenable situation, world-wide. That’s because countries need adequate space for their citizens too. No personal space multiplied by the population number results in no education, no realizing of individual dreams. That leads to resentment, wars, desperation to live in other countries where the grass is greener.
At the time of writing this, thousands of citizens are massed at Kabul airport in Afghanistan, waiting for days to have a chance of a better life elsewhere. Talk about invading personal space! Theirs is absolutely non-existent. They are jammed together, with no space between them. People are dying, crushed under a load of stinking humanity. No toilet facilities, no showers, water, food. It is unbearable. So extreme lack of space can actually kill.
Mothers are throwing their babies over razor wire to foreign soldiers, feeling this is the only chance that child will have to live a better life in the future.
Hopefully we all keep enough kind space in our hearts to feel absolute heartbreak when disaster, that is so hopeless, affects our fellow humans, no matter where they are.
Your personal space is a special component in your DNA. Only you can nurture it, guard it, strengthen it. Insist on having others respect it. The pandemic has provided numerous opportunities to help you in this. Social distancing is good. Masks are helpful.
You can feel when you’re comfortable at the perfect distance from others. Only you can determine that. Wear your personal space with pride and a smile.
Oh yes, a smile is part of your personal space too! Long ago, in evolution, monkeys learned to bare their teeth as a warning to not invade their personal space. We’ll never know exactly what the mysterious Mona Lisa smile is all about, but it’s powerful enough that folks still talk about it, and somehow you just know not to invade hers!
