For a while, many of us blamed the pandemic. The months indoors, the distance, the isolation, the cancelled dinners, postponed weddings, missed birthdays. We spoke about those years as though they had interrupted something healthy, as though human closeness had been moving along normally before an invisible virus stepped in and broke it.

But enough time has passed to make that explanation feel incomplete.

The restaurants reopened, the flights resumed, the offices filled again (well, most of them did). The world returned to motion

Yet something remained strangely untouched.

People still disappear for months without explanation. Friendships survive on old memories rather than new experiences. Entire families know intimate details of each other's lives from Facebook albums and almost nothing at all from real, true, genuine interaction and giggles between two sips of wine. We have become witnesses to one another rather than participants.

The pandemic did not create the distance.  It simply revealed how much of it was already there.

It is difficult to blame lockdowns for relationships that continue to starve long after the doors have reopened.

The era of contact
Never in human history have so many people remained in touch with so many others.

A cousin in another country. A childhood friend. A former colleague. A neighbour who moved away years ago. Their photographs arrive daily. Their holidays, promotions, new apartments, illnesses, engagements, children.

Information travels effortlessly, but the relationship does not.

A small green dot beside a name creates the comforting illusion that someone is still part of our lives; a birthday receives a cake emoji, a death receives a folded-hands emoji, a divorce receives a heart, a promotion receives a fire emoji.

The exchange takes less time than it takes to wait for a traffic light to change. And this has become enough to reassure both sides that care still exists.

A message can be sent while standing in a supermarket queue, or while watching television, while scrolling through five other conversations, while half-asleep… while sitting on the toilet.

The remarkable thing is not how little effort it requires. The remarkable thing is how much emotional meaning we have learned to attach to it.

Someone writes, "How are you?" The message arrives between a food delivery notification and a discount code. Hours later, the conversation disappears beneath newer messages, newer updates, newer distractions. Yet everyone leaves feeling they have maintained the relationship.

Human beings once had to cross villages, cities, and oceans to remain connected; letters took weeks; visits required planning; conversations demanded uninterrupted attention.

There was a time when people had to enter each other's lives. To see someone, you had to leave your house. You had to make room in your day. You had to arrive somewhere carrying your full attention with you. The relationship occupied physical space in the world, and now it occupies storage space.

I want to call it a SAS room
A friend can remain present in your phone for ten years without ever truly crossing your mind. Their photographs arrive, their updates appear. Enough signs of life to prevent the relationship from being mourned, yet not enough life to make it feel lived.

What has disappeared is difficult to name because the connection never fully vanished, but it just stopped accumulating weight.

No afternoons that stretched longer than expected, no conversations that wandered without purpose, no moments of choosing someone's company over convenience, no memories being built faster than they can be documented.

The relationship remains suspended in a permanent state of maintenance.

Like a house whose lights are still on, whose address still exists, whose door has never been locked, but where nobody really lives anymore.

And so we continue carrying hundreds of people with us.

Not close enough to touch our lives.
Not distant enough to leave them.
Just there.

Visible from afar, like lights in neighbouring windows.

Existing in a strange modern condition where two people continue receiving updates about each other for years while gradually becoming strangers.