Social Distancing

IN ITALY, THE DISTANCE is one meter, about a yard and four inches. In the United States, the required human separation is six feet, no less. This is appropriate, because the Italians are a far more friendly, far more touchy feely bunch than we anal retentive Americans, of mostly Anglo-Germanic stock.Whatever the case, humanity, all over the world, is being admonished to stay away from each other, to avoid strangers, and to keep human contact within the immediate gene pool. This will be much easier for some than for others. It is a time to celebrate the introvert, and to eschew the value of human closeness? Who needs genuine human closeness anyway? Who needs an affectionate hug or a friendly handshake? This is the onset of the era of the introvert, the dawning of a cold hearted age in which we are forced by nature to disavow true human closeness, of the sort which builds civilizations and sustains them.I for one am not unhappy about it, this new, isolated arrangement. Like I tell people, I love people, but only from a distance; the closer the contact, the more deeply inbred the contempt of familiarity.Actually, I often tell myself and others that I plain don't like people, that I much prefer dogs and cats and any other species to my own, but only when I am in a bad mood, on the depressive end of the bipolar spectrum. Without everyone else, I would be meaningless, worthless, unable to do anything, nonexistent, and I know this intimately. But in fact i do keep my distance, and I prefer knowing a great many people as mere acquaintances to knowing a few of them as close friends. One must have some of both, in fact.So, all over the world, various personality types are coping with, responding to the circumstances so cruelly forced upon us by our natural master, and each deals with it as best one can. Its a matter of survival. I am quite content, as always, to stay home with my cats, and hope for the best. I trust everyone else will do likewise. I will be happy, as I always have been, in my protected cocoon of a life. But I know this; this is a good time be be an introvert, and an ever better time to be a loner. The hordes and crowds will return soon enough, when we have survived nature's onslaught, and we will once again be free, to love or hate each other, close up, as we choose.