Post-pandemic friendship

As I wrote the title I realized my own hypocrisy - I’ve been seeing multiple public figures on tv of all walks of life mentioning that this will pass, that this is temporary. Everytime I come across such a statement I always get the same unsettling feeling that everyone is being an optimist over something they cannot fully grasp. What if this is not temporary? I’m always too skeptical, I’m programmed from childhood to consider worse case scenarios first, which sometimes has been an impediment to living my life intuitively.

Yet somehow I keep talking to a friend and referring to her as post-pandemic friend, despite none of us being in a post-pandemic world. Obviously what I mean is a friend from the pandemic reality but it often seems the former statement is optimism in disguise. Should I quote some german philosopher and say something along the lines of pessimism keeps us grounded? No?

I’ve heard my friend’s voice more often times I’ve seen her face - that’s not only a post-pandemic situation, but an intersectional matter with our existence as millenials. We don’t want to be seen so much as we want to be heard. Our generation likes seeing, and there is, in fact, already so much to see. We communicate asynchronously through audio clips. I’ve found myself laughing twice at the same thing: once for my personal experience, the other because I was replying to someone through audio. And both instances were painfully sincere. Maybe this is the future for now, hearing our friends laugh without seeing them smile.

Small note: as a first post, you can see there is not much hope for structure here. I’ve been described as the chaotic neutral type, please don’t expect anything else.