Article

Attention

Change

Character

Digital

8 January 2025

5 min read

“I’m just not good at staying in touch”

Rather than make excuses, be honest.

Iona Curtius

Iona is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, studying how we can understand truth.

A woman holds her phone up in her hands and looks at it in a slightly vexed way.

David Suarez on Unsplash

This is an article about honesty… but we’ll get to that.

I cannot count the number of times I have heard some variation of the phrase “I’m sorry, I’m just not very good at staying in touch” or “I’m just terrible at texting, sorry”. Usually, such apologies are accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, a helpless smile, sometimes even a hint of smugness. Every time I experience such an interaction, I get a little closer to losing my patience. So, it’s probably safer for everyone if I voice my thoughts in this way, safely tucked away behind a screen.

What’s going on here? I believe it’s quite simple: dishonesty. Now, I don’t wish to unjustly accuse anyone of lying, much less assume ill intent. I’m sure everyone who has ever said that to me has believed it to be true. But, as we will see, that’s part of the problem.

Nobody is naturally ‘good at staying in touch’. Nobody is naturally ‘good’ at texting. These aren’t ‘natural’ forms of communication, or even ‘natural’ relationships. We have the opportunities now to meet and form connections with SO many more people than our forebears did. It is impossible to build, let alone maintain close friendships with everyone we meet. Relationships take work and effort, even with people we see regularly. So, what’s the problem with saying “I’m not very good at texting”? Isn’t it a normal, reasonable thing to say?

The problem is that it is used as an excuse. Just because something is hard or does not come naturally does not mean we can’t do it. We do hard things all the time, if we feel they are important and worth our effort. Doing the dishes doesn’t come naturally to me and I hate doing it. Still, I don’t invite friends over for dinner and then tell them, “Sorry, I’ve made food, but you’ll have to eat it out of the pot because I’m just not very good at doing the dishes”. I value my friends (and my health) so I do the flipping dishes. I’m not as on top of it as other people but I have found ways of helping myself to do a task I ‘naturally’ struggle with.

But back to the matter in hand: I believe that the aforementioned excuses are dishonest because finding texting hard is not actually the reason we don’t stay in touch with some people. What these phrases are hiding is “making the effort to stay in touch with you is not worth my time”. Now, obviously, most of us would never dream of saying anything quite so mean. But if we are honest with ourselves and look at our lives more closely, I do think that’s what it boils down to. Simply putting a nicer sounding lie in front of that does not make it any better.

So how do we get out of this? The answer is simple but not easy: honesty. Be honest. With yourself, above all else. Ask yourself, truly, “Why am I bad at staying in touch?” Are you trying to stay in touch with too many people at once? Is it a time management problem? Is it an attention problem? Do you simply forget someone exists if you don’t see them? It’s ok if that is the case. Just be honest about it. Once you have correctly identified what is making it hard you can decide whether you want to find ways to make those hurdles smaller, or whether you are simply going to be more honest in future. You don’t have to directly tell someone “You aren’t worth my time” (in fact, I’d strongly recommend not doing that). You can say something like “I find that maintaining (close) friendships at distance is particularly hard for me, so I focus on friends who are geographically close to me”. Or something similar. Be honest about the reason you find staying in touch hard.

If you are frustrated with how ‘bad you are at texting’, here are some ideas for how to make it easier on yourself. You might think about adding one or two of these to your routine at the beginning of this new year, perhaps.

If the problem is busyness or object permanence, set reminders and/or have ‘reply-amnesties’ where you reply to the texts from the week/fortnight/month. Some apps allow you to pin chats that are important to the top of your page, so you always see them when you open the app. Or, alternatively, you can archive those you don’t need so there’s less clutter. If the problem is the medium, texting feels impersonal, you don’t like having to be constantly ‘online’, or you live in a cave on a desert island, you can find other ways. Could you arrange (regular) calls? If you’ve recently won the lottery, you could send a letter by snail mail. Whether it’s voice notes, video updates, group calls, online board games, or Netflix watch parties, the possibilities are near endless.

One more thing: set expectations. Rather than simply telling people what you can’t do, tell them what they can expect. “Yes, I would like to stay ‘in touch’, but I prioritise the people who are geographically close to me.” “I won’t frequently reply to texts, but I do a reply amnesty every couple of weeks, so you’ll hear from me then.” If you do want to ‘be better at staying in touch’, let people know how they can help you. Maybe you struggle to initiate conversations but you’re happy to reply. Maybe you’re in a position to be able to say, “You can come visit me any time” or even “I’ll be in touch when I’m in the area and we can get together over a hot beverage or a meal.”

Just BE HONEST. Please.

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Article

Attention

Character

Culture

Film & TV

21 January 2025

4 min read

Traitors holds a mirror up to this obsession of ours

The attitude that is eroding empathy.

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

The cast and presenter of a competition TV programme assembled in a montage.

BBC.

“So you’re basically calling me Harold Shipman or something?”

2025 may have barely begun but BBC One’s The Traitors has already offered a strong contender for TV moment of the year.

If you’re not familiar with the show – and if you aren’t, where have you been? – a group of strangers head off to a castle in Scotland to earn money through a series of challenges while show host Claudia Winkleman smoulders at the camera. Meanwhile, some competitors are designated ‘Traitors’ and can steal the money at the end of the competition, while the rest – the ‘Faithfuls’ – must unmask the ‘Traitors’, banishing one person each day. In return, the Traitors can ‘murder’ one Faithful a night.

It's stupid and ridiculous and melodramatic. I love it.

Something that has struck me this series is the inability of contestants to imagine that people might behave differently to them. Early on, Dr. Kas “Definitely-Not-Harold-Shipman” Ahmed raises a toast to a ‘murdered’ Faithful. “That’s sketchy,” everyone immediately thinks. “I wouldn’t have done that, and I’m a Faithful, so Kas MUST BE A TRAITOR!”

The group votes to banish him shortly afterwards.

The certainty with which contestants decide someone is a Traitor based on the most minute and innocuous details is incredible. Oooh, Glenda just coughed at an inopportune moment. Obviously a Traitor. Look at Keith taking the stairs two at a time. It’s like he wants to be caught!

The ‘Faithfuls’ seem completely unable to imagine people might be different from them. That they might think differently, or act differently. There is, in other words, a complete lack of empathy.

As the always-absolutely-right-about-everything Brené Brown tells us, sympathy is recognising someone else’s perspective. But empathy is feeling with someone; it is sharing that perspective. And it’s empathy that’s needed for human connection. And it’s empathy that is missing on The Traitors.

All of this ultimately reminds me of the work of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. Taylor is arguably the most influential living philosopher. Much of his work – especially in books like Sources of the Self, and A Secular Age – is concerned with explaining modern western societies, their characteristics, and where those characteristics emerge from.

Taylor claims that these societies have stopped privileging ‘exteriority’ and have started privileging ‘interiority’ instead.

What on earth does that mean?

In 1637, René Descartes says “I think, therefore I am,” and western philosophy never recovers. Descartes is looking for a foundation, a starting point from which he can make sense of himself and the world around him. But this is not easy. What’s to say he’s not hallucinating, or being deceived by a demon, so that the world around him isn’t as it seems?

What’s the one thing he can be sure of? That he thinks!

The fact he’s even thinking and doubting his senses tells Descartes that he is someone or something who exists and thinks. That sounds obvious, but it gives Descartes the foundation from which he can make sense of reality.

As a result of Descartes’ philosophy, we imagine that our very ‘selves’ are located entirely ‘within us’ somehow, with the rest of reality found ‘outside’ ourselves. This is a ‘gap’ of sorts, between us and the world, while the interior self becomes the place where the meaning of our existence is discovered and understood.

Modern life, Taylor says, therefore instils in us a sense of detachment from everyone and everything else. I have my interior world, you have yours. I can never truly know you, and you can never truly know me.

I could be the next Harold Shipman for all you know.

But it wasn’t always like this, Taylor argues. Modernity’s preoccupation with the inner self was preceded by a more outside-centred view of the world.

In this outside-centred worldview, I and the people around me aren’t simply unknowable black holes of interiority. Instead, we are both parts of a broader created realm. And, by virtue of us both being creatures located within something bigger than either of ourselves, this outside-centred view of the world becomes a point of commonality from which we can get to know each other.

Shared humility leads to connection, in other words.

All of this, I think, goes some way to explaining why I’m watching a seemingly lovely doctor having a quasi-breakdown over being misconstrued as a serial killer. The Traitors shows how obsessed we have become with our own interiority. We are inward-looking creatures now. As such, we are often slow to recognise the ways in which our shared place within creation only unites us.

While a little introspection and self-reflection is vital for healthy human flourishing, out-and-out navel-gazing only hinders our ability to connect with those around us. With a little help from Charles Taylor, The Traitors reminds me to get out of my own head and to see beyond myself. To look at the world around me, and to see the people with whom I share it.