“When I care to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision—then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” --  Audre Lorde

A few minutes before the curtain went up, I turned to my friend and asked her how life was at home.

“Good, good! Well, Tom is struggling with this ear thing. He’s asked me not to share specifics, but…” and then, as the final theater-goers found their seats, I learned about Tom’s difficult health news.

Sharing is the currency of nearly all of my friendships. Updates on health, romances, work projects, house-moves, all of life’s dramas—big and small—are shared in conversation.

The way I know about the lives of my loved ones is because I am told about them.

Sometimes that happens in person, on the phone or by text, or I see it in a status update—but the principle holds:‍

Intimacy demands disclosure.‍

But disclosure culture is reaching its limits. Critic Anne Helen Peterson’s fabulous post about our collective social media malaise suggests we want an alternative. And although I’m still using Instagram, especially, I agree! There’s nothing I loathe more about myself than the desire to post inane shit because I want that dopamine hit of a response.

But what is the alternative? Smaller group threads, yes. Less broadcast, more conversation, yes, that too.

But nearly always the solutions are still framed as disclosure done differently.

How interesting, then, to spend the last month traveling with two friends in South Africa, where nearly each day started with a shared workout and ended with dinner together. Weekends were spent hiking, going out dancing, or watching a movie. It was the three of us over and over and over again.

Sure, we talked a lot. But our lives started to be known to each other less because of disclosure and more because of proximity. I was simply close up enough to them—and they to me—to notice when something was different. I had been present enough to see the change before and after the job interview. Or clock the haircut.‍

Intimacy didn’t demand disclosure, it demanded proximity.‍

This is the life I want more of.

Not just sunshine in January (though, DEAR LORD, that was wonderful!) But I want a life of greater proximity.

It’s not that I want my circle of concern to diminish. It’s that I want my daily life to stumble over the people I love more than needing to “check in” so much. I think that’s part of the exhaustion so many of us are feeling—we are constantly relying on conversation as the currency of connection.

And I say that as someone that’s good at conversation! But for folks, especially men, who don’t find that as easy, or for people who have less time for chat because of caring responsibilities or unstable work, the cost isn’t so much exhaustion as isolation.

Put it this way: if you can’t play the disclosure game, you’re increasingly alone.

So, how do we cultivate greater proximity?‍

Proximity demands commitment‍

As Andy Crouch writes in The Life We’re Looking For, “The household, with its proximity, interdependent, and various kinds of intimacy, limits the freedom of its members in real ways.”

And that’s what proximity demands—limited freedom.

Commitment. Choosing each other at the cost of other options.

The irony is not lost on me that I needed to travel to another continent to build that kind of committed time together. But it does give me a script that I want to follow more of. More regular gatherings like my monthly singing night. More standing dinners with the same group of friends.

The only thing that’s missing is that shared morning workout…

So Brooklyn friends, who’s up for stoop aerobics at 7am tomorrow?