We all have our ways of dealing with a world that feels increasingly messy and on edge. I tend to fight that sort of anxiety by turning into a control freak. When the outside falls apart, my mind gets busy constructing a neatly organised routine I can rely on.

Stuck at home during the lockdowns, I doubled down on my methodical approach, almost pedantically adhering to routines that gave my day structure and my mind the calming illusion of normality.

With social and cultural life returning here in Australia (at least for now), I struggle letting go of said routines. A part of me is rejoicing about friends and events filling up my calendar again. But another part suddenly feels irritated, not to say annoyed, by other people. I catch myself saying things like: “I was more productive during lockdown.”

Devin Kelly’s heartfelt piece ​​I Miss it All (see also Food for Thought below) could not have come at a better time. I was just feeling awful for thinking of my friends as an inconvenience when Kelly reminded me that it’s a feeling imposed on us by a system obsessed with productivity.

Kelly enjoys long runs and here he describes how dealing with the many little ‘inconveniences’ of exercising with others is exactly what makes human connections meaningful and helps us overcome our differences:

“When we have been alone in so many ways for so long, I worry that we run the risk of losing the ability to find value in one another organically, in the ways people know best. The small, daily inconveniences of life. The long run cut too short. The short run ventured long. …”

“When I’m running with my friends, I often think of how incomprehensible it is that we are friends. I’m a teacher who wakes up early to read. One of my friends hasn’t read a book in years. And yet, because of how often we have moved together through inconveniences, how often we have breathed side by side, or how often one of us has paused while the other has tied a shoe or sprinted into a bathroom or stopped for a drink of water, we have learned the value of connection brought on by vulnerability, the love required to go by the same stopwatch while moving, sometimes, at different speeds, each of us with wholly different needs.”

I really like his point about the importance of not just being with or next to others (like we so often are with phone in hand, eyes on screen) but among one other:

“To be among those who love us means to be among the all-ness of those who love us. To be among the dailiness of us. Our minor squabbles, our pettiness, our arguments and frustrations. It means to spend time. The kind of time, these days, that we are told is better spent producing or consuming. The kind of time, these days, that we are told is better spent alone. Maybe with. Maybe next to. Still alone.”

“If friendship becomes commodified and the experience of community becomes increasingly eliminated [from] the various intricacies of being among people, we lose the sometimes hard, sometimes surprising, sometimes fucked up, sometimes beautiful paths that are not simply the same path each day. Maybe we lose learning how to apologize. Maybe we lose learning how to say thank you. We lose, almost certainly, many moments of gratitude.”

We’re constantly told to eradicate everything (and everyone) that stands in the way of our most productive selves. And with life increasingly unfolding online (how about that metaverse?!), dealing with the fickleness of human behaviour is becoming optional.

Thank you, Devin, for reminding me to appreciate the many little inconveniences that are a natural part of being among others and to see them as opportunities for connection, not barriers to productivity. – Kai