Cherishing Real Human Contact

Miller beer has a current ad campaign that focuses on doing: “Make the plan. Forget the couch. See them in person. Do the thing. Play the game. Say hi to that stranger. Live a little.” It’s a message that probably wouldn’t have resonated before, say, social media, or the internet in general; people went out as a matter of course. But in an age when countries are setting up programs to help men and women meet each other, goodness, maybe a message that reminds people that being human means interacting with fellow human beings needs to be heard, even in a beer commercial.

Interacting with fellow humans can take many forms. A few weeks ago Melissa Kirsch of the New York Times wrote of the joys of running errands, something I also value. She described a friend who “praises the ‘soft-touch socialization’ you get while out and about: the salesperson you chat with before going on your way, the neighbor you catch up with when you run into them at the dump. ‘I cherish the connective tissue of errands, when you’re between stops, driving or walking. Bursts of activity followed by respites of solitude, each stop its own tidy episode.’”

I love this, and I too cherish the little niceties that I exchange with fellow shoppers, the local mail carrier, store clerks and cashiers. Kirsch goes on to encourage all of us not to stay in and hibernate on the weekends to chill and recharge, but instead to go out into the world and run errands.

Here again – we need coaxing to actually leave the house on the weekends to get stuff done. Yikes.

And sure, a quick chat with a cashier at a store can be pleasant – on some days even life-affirming – but this of course doesn’t constitute a relationship. Nothing is required of either party except being kind to each other (which, granted, is not always so common these days).

And this feeds into another essay I read last year, this one by Elizabeth Oldfield, who wrote a guest essay in the New York Times that addresses our declining social muscles and how we need to rehabilitate them. One thing she addressed was our impatience with human relationships that naturally lead to occasional conflicts. Instead, she says that we increasingly “avoid ties of mutual obligation in favor of frictionless transactions.” I’ve seen this in my own life; so many of my casual relationships go no deeper than a talk of the weather and sports scores.

But people need to do so much more to experience the value of real, honest, human relationships. There’s nothing more frustrating, more exhilarating, more stupefying, more joyful, more heart-breaking, or lovelier. It is the be all and end all.

But don’t take my word for it – trust the wisdom of a Miller Beer commercial. They got it right this time.