Share the Fish

Share the Fish

I’ve been thinking about the ways in which people have become more isolated in New York City over the last few years.

The Internet, cell phones, coffee cafes, all seem both manifestations and causes of this trend.

People watch movies, work, and talk to friends without leaving their computers or their homes, but may have very little contact with people in their neighborhood.  Some of us even buy our groceries online. (I do).

We bring our laptops, cell phones and ipods everywhere.
Trying to get by someone in a store or on the street-you say excuse me and they don’t move-they’re not being rude-they just can’t hear you because they’re listening to their ipods.

Late the other evening on the bus, I noticed a young couple, apparently returning home from an evening out.  How sweet and romantic they looked! Except…they were each on their cell phones, talking in a foreign language to other people.

When I was living in Paris, people would tell me they found the Parisians rude and unapproachable.  And I would explain that they weren’t –it was just that the culture was different.  If you weren’t introduced it was as if you didn’t exist, but once you were introduced, you had a friend for life. Social relations were so more like those in a Victorian novel than American social life – harder to establish, but deeper and more durable.  Being invited to someone’s home was a big deal. It usually implied a close personal, and probably permanent relationship and, in most cases, an elaborate multi-course meal.  (I remember a friend apologizing profusely when she only served steak as the main course for an impromptu dinner at her house).

Generally, people met in cafes or restaurants for a drink or a meal. In public there was no common territory, every family, individual or group of friends was in their own private bubble –you just didn’t exist unless you were inside it.  But once you got into the bubble, the strength and persistence of the relationships could be amazing.

I loved Paris, but I still enjoyed going back to New York, where strangers could chat and become friends fast, people invited you over on impulse, and strangers routinely moved out of each other’s way and got up for the elderly and disabled on the bus.

When I returned to New York, a number of years ago, I was amazed at the renewed ease of contact and the casual connections, but I also saw some changes.  One of them was the growth of a café culture, where people met for coffee and didn’t invite people home so much.  As time went by, cell phones, and then ipods proliferated, making people more involved with others at a distance, and less aware of what was going on in front of their noses.

At the same time I noticed, fewer people were getting up for elderly, pregnant and disabled people boarding buses.  Had our culture changed, I wondered?    We seemed to be becoming more Parisian in our public behavior.  But were we becoming more like them in private too?  With stronger, more durable commitments to family and friends?  I didn’t think so.

And then there was the tragedy of Katrina.  And one of the few hopeful things was the response of strangers, through vehicles like craigslist, to help victims, by providing aid and shelter. Now the ever- present Internet, and newer VOIP (computer phone service) were bringing people together in crucial, life saving ways, not isolating them.

Perhaps one thing we can learn from the tragedy of Katrina is to realize our responsibility to and for one another, not just in a national tragedy, but also locally on a daily basis and, to use an old phrase, our interdependence on each other.
When I was growing up, on the Upper West Side, neighbors coming back from fishing would drop off fish for each other.  That doesn’t seem to happen so much anymore.  Of course, this sense of shared community hasn’t disappeared completely. A few years ago, for example, my tenants’ association, organized regular visits to an ailing neighbor. But I seem to hear stories like this more rarely than I used to.

New ways of living and new technology have brought us choices, in terms of our personal and professional lives, that would have been unimaginable a century, or even a couple of decades.  But as we savor our new connections and new communities, let’s try to remember the ties based on physical proximity and interdependence and share the fish.

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