Life Behind A Mask: Finding A Detour To Human Connection

Follow, if you will, my mid-pandemic meanderings; from grocery shopping and eccentric eyebrows, through to negativity bias, evolution and neuroscience.

Most of us are getting pretty used to the sensation of elastic cords behind our ears, courtesy of Covid-19. Donning a face mask as a precautionary measure — on behalf of both self and community — seems like solid common sense to me, but I find myself wondering about the trickling ramifications if this is to become the new normal.

Are face masks going to linger as a daily sight, post-pandemic, as they were already in China or Japan before 2020 turned the world upside down? I can’t help but question what destinies await for the subtleties of human interaction. What might the costs of such a social barrier be in the long term, and how can we circumnavigate them?

Connected, and yet disconnected

On the one hand, wearing a mask is a wonderful gesture of togetherness; something we can do to safeguard others, as well as ourselves. And yet, my stomach twists a little in angst over the thought of yet another wedge preventing you and me from becoming us, in a world that already sees us each perched isolated within our digital fortresses — interacting largely from behind our ever-present screens.

Of course, the online realm has provided a huge gift in interconnectedness, and a veritable treasure trove of information at our fingertips. Our communities have begun to span continents rather than neighbourhoods, but we still find ourselves navigating an era of loneliness. How can this be?

Smiling, behind a mask

I find myself getting ready to go to Lidl for groceries — something that I have to admit has become the rather tragic highlight of my social calendar during the dire straits of lockdown — and I am examining my eyebrows in the mirror as never before. When your face is covered from the chin to the bridge of the nose, there isn’t much to work with, is there?

You see, I’m one of those people who take pleasure in the pursuit of trying to make strangers smile. Cashiers and servers are my most frequent victims, although I consider anyone fair game when it comes to giving a broad grin for no reason other than, well, why not? My logic is that you never know when you might transform someone’s day meaningfully — and smiling is free.

With that in mind, I find myself critically eyeing my white blonde and barely-there brows. I recall how, upon meeting my partner’s kids for the first time, one of them asked: “Why doesn’t she have any eyebrows?” How, I wonder, are these minimally useful resources supposed to serve as my primary vehicle for public expression? I nudgingly know there’s an element of ridiculousness to my line of thinking — and yet, having some sort of strategy in place feels like an imperative.

If I can’t smile at the stern-looking woman in the toilet paper aisle when I accidentally bump her basket with mine, what is the appropriate gesture? If I can’t beam at the guy on the cash register, how will he know that I appreciate his efforts?

When I catch someone’s eye without the full facial composition, I wonder if they will misinterpret my gaze — will that intended eye twinkle come across as just a little psychotic?

Our facial expressions are so instinctive, but I don’t feel convinced that they work in component parts. Words are a starting point too, I know, but they somehow seem hollow without visual cues. Perhaps that’s why we’re all obsessed with emojis, and it doesn’t count as laziness after all?

I cover my mouth with my hand and try to figure out if others might see that I’m smiling through eyebrow-action alone — entirely unsatisfactory. I find myself thinking of Vivienne Westwood’s zany eyeliner looks, and Amanda Palmer’s arty drawn-on eyebrows. Is it time for a radical reinvention of beauty to better help us communicate?

No doubt, such a step wouldn’t be for everyone. So, do we need to start making awkwardly theatrical hand gestures? Perhaps they only feel theatrical because this is new territory — in times of challenge, it’s all about adaptation, right?

All of this might seem banal and trivial, but my gut tells me it’s important. Although, let it be noted that I don’t think you should skip the mask, favouring facial expressions over physical safety. Absolutely not.

However, I do think that the increased isolation we are experiencing — at the gel-disinfected-hands of the coronavirus — should be framed within a larger picture of community health. We live in an era of great social division, and that’s perhaps our greatest shame.

Triggers to our negativity bias

Marketers and media moguls have cottoned on to the fact that we respond far more to negativity than we do positivity, due to something called negativity bias. So they fill our newspapers and media feeds with outrage-inducing clickbait headlines.

Why does that work? Because we are, evolutionary speaking, primed to respond powerfully to threats. A button-pushing headline will side-step our sophisticated prefrontal cortex — capable of calm and rational analysis — and strike right within the primal limbic system — the area of our brains responsible for emotion, and reaction: namely fight or flight.

In bygone eras, this would have meant we fled from the lion, which would have qualified as excellent processing. But today, it means we click on that which riles us — generating advertising revenue for others, at the cost of our own mental health — and all too often we pass on, to our virtual friends, that which brings society and community down.

Fascinatingly, the limbic system is also deeply intertwined with behavioural reinforcement so, as you can see, it leaves us in quite the pickle. Let’s at least try to side-step transference, lest we think our co-shoppers as hostile rather than friendly, simply for a lack of familiar indicators!

Evolved to connect

So, what does this loosely Lidl-related conundrum call for? Perhaps the place to start is in recognising that, as a species, we are literally hardwired for connection. We have been gathering and living in groups for some 52 million years — or at least our primate ancestral line has, according to the research of Susanne Shultz from the University of Oxford.

Our sophisticated brain structure evolved toe to toe with our increasingly complex social behaviour, blossoming forward to around 6–700,000 years ago when Homo Heidelbergensis were the first of our ancestors to enjoy the brain size we have now — capable of all the creativity, mastery, and imagination we extraordinarily exhibit, and playing Candy Crush Saga of course. For them, this critical point in evolution came when working, hunting, and meeting around campfires together became the norm.

We imparted and shared knowledge through so much more than language, cultivating a bounty of delicate signals, in terms of body language, gestures, and expressions. Today, neuroscience tells us that social sensitivity is truly our default state.

When we zone out — pause from activity, or take a moment for repose — we don’t go into standby. Instead, the areas of our brain responsible for social thinking and interaction fire up. In fact, so innate is our relationship with human connection that when we comfort someone else in distress, even though the moment may seem dark, our brains reward us with a dose of the friendly chemical oxytocin.

Less potentially problematic than its addiction-associated sister neurotransmitter dopamine, oxytocin is the chemical that makes us feel secure, loved, grounded, and connected — as if we belong. And so, it is clear that we are primed for connection above all else. To forget that is to neglect who we are on a most fundamental level.

Knowing this, if we are to face the challenges upon us in the short term, including the virus and its associated face coverings — not to mention the great economic hardship, illness, and bereavement that many are battling — and vastly more complex long-term issues such as climate change, equality, and displaced populations — to name but a few — we are going to need to rediscover those ancient instincts for connection and bring them to the surface.

So, as you navigate this period of pandemic — safely social distancing as you go — take a moment to make sure that you are not matching those physical barriers to connection with psychological ones. Practice compassion with those stuck in the clammy grasp of limbic-system-driving divisiveness.

Go ahead and hug those close to you, if you can, and seek out ways to connect with others when you can’t — even if virtual substitution is the only option for now. As for time spent awkwardly in the aisles of Lidl, it will remain my intention to make damn sure that you know I’m friendly, even if I look a little kooky doing it! In that, I sincerely hope you’ll join me.

Jemima writes for a variety of brands from her smallholding in Central Portugal. Find her on Facebook and Fiverr.

Image credits: cottonbro, Artem Podrez, and Branimir Balogović via Pexels.