The Importance of “Personal Space” as we ease the lock-down and resume economic activities

Picture this: you are seated in the office, and someone comes standing behind you and starts a conversation, over you and with a colleague seated directly opposite?

I know what you are thinking, “Those days are gone,” and I would strongly agree that, for most people, that is true. We are now so aware of our environment that it would not be an issue.

Let’s take a step back, though…

Keeping your personal space is something we all cherish. We hear people talk about others, “invading my personal space.” In essence, that happens when another person comes uncomfortably close to you.

Personal Space is a distance that we choose to keep from others, depending on how we see our relationship with them. Therefore, we can’t help but feel uncomfortable when we are touched or brushed, or when someone is talking so close to our face or ears or when they are following us so closely.

As children, we allowed our parents to place us on their lap and hold our hands. As teenagers, we would playfully touch our friends and allow them to touch us. 

As adults, we hug and kiss those our partners and spouses. We, therefore, choose those whom we allow into this space.

When someone “invades” our personal space, we get very uncomfortable, and people have experienced anxiety, sweating, and in some cases, even downright anger.

Many people who use public transport, primarily trains during rush hour, have come to accept that personal space is very difficult to enforce. Before the lockdown in the U.K. I regularly took trains into and within the city of London. On those trains, especially in the early morning and evening rush hour, it was not uncommon to have people standing cheek by jowl due to overcrowding.

So why is maintaining your personal space important? Our personal space is largely an area of “protection” around us, and it allows us a feeling of safety. We reserve our personal space only for those we let in.

When others avoid invading this space, we feel valued and respected. This is an incredibly powerful and effective state of mind. We also find it painful to watch this happen to other people in these situations. Some will not bat an eye standing up for others whose personal space has been invaded.

Pre Covid-19, personal spaces are areas we protect, and some are more passionate about the width of that space. Then, we had the start of the pandemic, and we were told by health experts to keep maintaining at least a 2-meter distance from everyone outside our immediate households.

I would argue that before the broadening of the knowledge around the coronavirus, protecting our personal space would, in many cases, be merely a case of wanting others to respect our boundaries and a sign of courtesy.

With what we know now about this deadly virus, that subject has taken a higher level of importance. It can literarily be a matter of life and death.

So how would this affect our interaction with other people?

Normally if someone invades your personal space, there are a few actions that most people would take and these include:

• Stepping away and re-establishing the distance you are comfortable with, with the assumption that they will take the hint.
• Tell them that they are uncomfortably close
• Accept it

As we go through this lockdown, we have many areas well marked with people being advised to keep social distance, and also, there are props and markings to help in that stead. 

Given that many of the shops currently open are principally large grocery stores and the fact that many businesses are shut down, as states and countries move to open, keeping some can see your personal space as a matter of life and death.

So, what are the realities we expect to see happening?

I have personally experienced people on queues failing to keep the 2-meter advised distancing, and I have had to tell them off or taken alternative steps to ensure I keep myself safe. 

I expect to see more instances of this and how people with different temperaments and language barriers handle this invasion of their personal space?

When people start to come out of this hibernation, we expect nerves to be frayed, and emotion may run high. The possibility that people will be more aggressive towards those whom they perceive as invading their space, in my view, is likely to increase.

The majority of people would be well aware of their environment and the heightened importance of keeping personal space. There are, however, many who have failed or refused to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation we are in.

How do we manage that interaction when someone is not respecting the personal space of others?

The question is, how far will you go to protect your personal space and those of your loved ones? 

Time will tell.

The stakes, though now, are very high.