We’ve all been there: you hold out your hand to greet someone, but they don’t notice. It’s a bit of an awkward situation. I remember that Toon Hermans was great at exaggerating situations like that in his New Year’s Eve comedy show. Something like, “Yeah, I tried to make the best of it—I waved my hand and even smoothed my hair into place!”

There are various traditions when it comes to greeting people. In the Netherlands, we’re used to shaking hands—aside from close friends and family who hug or kiss each other. That was before the pandemic. Now, social distancing is the order of the day. An elbow bump or a fist bump is now the best we can do in business and social settings.

So the pandemic has done a lot of harm in this regard. That much is clear. We’re longing once again for what we were used to, including wild crowds at parties and festivals. Yet there was also a cathartic effect to our “punishment of freedom.” You could avoid many obligations with a simple “COVID” or “quarantine” excuse. “I’m not allowed to” served as an excuse to skip work for a while—or, for example, to avoid visiting your mother-in-law.

Besides, distance can sometimes be a good thing. Distancing yourself from the system or the people you belong to can provide insight. A relationship sometimes needs some distance to appreciate what you actually have together. What goes wrong when you miss someone? I’m currently working with someone like that in a coaching session. The feedback they gave each other was a bit harsh. The team members involved all need to mull that over for a while. The first instinct is “love it or leave it.” To turn away. But then, afterward, with that distance comes reflection. They do need each other’s complementary qualities to function as a team. Connection then arises from free will—with a willingness to take each other’s “user manual” into account.

In Germany, there’s a saying that beautifully illustrates this idea of a free commitment: “entweder du kommst oder nicht, wir freuen uns” (whether you come or not, we’re happy). Even without the coronavirus, once things return to normal, it’s good to keep some distance from one another every now and then. To realize just how much you need the other person. You’ll see that afterward, you’ll start greeting each other in a different way.

Soon, once this wave passes, there will be no more restrictions on our freedom. We’ll be able to visit each other again. Thanks to the success of Zoom and Teams, a hybrid model—somewhere between the digital and the physical—is emerging, one we’ll need to explore further. In this context, the balance between physical and digital distance becomes very noticeable. When do we meet in person, and when do we meet digitally? Setting functionality aside—after all, creative processes can be quite challenging in a digital setting—the question is whether the choice between in-person and digital says anything about the relationship. If you feel free not to, then distance isn’t such a bad thing after all.

I’m curious to see how we’ll greet each other again soon. Will we just go back to shaking hands, or will we stick with the fist bump—at a distance? Even if you hold out your fist, the other person might miss it. It’s an awkward situation. I wonder who’s going to make a joke about it on the New Year’s Eve special.