I was at the gym today. It’s January. Everyone in the known world was at the gym today. Anyway, while I was at the gym, I realised that there are several people I routinely see while I’m there, who I know from other areas of my life. There’s one of my ex neighbours, for example. She’s there all the time. When I bump into her in the street, we always say hello, and usually follow this up with a lengthy chat. In the gym, we go to ridiculous lengths to avoid eye contact. There’s the girl from the café at work. I’ve never bought a cappuccino in that café without asking how she is. I’ve never done anything but studiously avoid her in the gym. Granted, it’s sometimes inconvenient to chat while struggling for breath on the treadmill, or to listen to someone while your headphones are blaring out Taylor Swift, but that’s not the reason. And it’s not the slight awkwardness of being sweaty and semi-naked either. Because there are plenty of people I do chat to, or at the very least exchange some sort of wheezy greeting with, at the gym. But these are, without exception, people I only recognise from the gym. And that’s ok, it transpires, because they are in context. 

Context turns out to be really important in relationships. I think on reflection that it might be even more important than having something in common. And having something in common is really pretty important. Take the small talk necessary, for example, during the coffee break at a work conference. We all recognise that desperate need to identify something in common – it’s the thing that leads us to exclaim, with extreme relief, ‘no way! That’s such a coincidence! I came on the train too!’, as if catching a train is about as common as flying in astride a dodo. I guess we’re programmed to seek out and seize on those things we have in common, no doubt in some sort of innate attempt to strengthen the human gene pool. 

But my experience at the gym made me realise that context trumps things in common. My ex neighbour and I have a number of things in common – we used to live on the same street, for a start. We also know each other by name, and have a few of the same friends. But she doesn’t belong in the gym. She belongs on our old street, or at least in the vicinity of our old street. And she clearly thinks the same about me. The girl from the café at work doesn’t belong in the gym either, she lives behind the till, making a mean cappuccino. The people at the gym, the ones I only ever see at the gym, they’re the people who are supposed to be at the gym. And I’m more than happy to acknowledge them. Anyone else, well quite frankly it’s all a bit disconcerting.

This explains a lot. Well, it explains a few things. Some of the people who have clearly struggled to know what to say or how to react to me during my recent cancer treatment have been those who know me quite well, and with whom I have a fair bit in common. People I’ve met much more recently, since starting my treatment, and with whom I have comparatively little in common, don’t really seem to have struggled at all. I was a bit surprised by this, but I guess my waltzing into a room looking like a fairly convincing Humpty Dumpty, and in the context of ‘chemo patient’ as opposed to ‘work colleague’ or whatever the usual context was, might have seemed fairly disconcerting. Whereas for more recent acquaintances, I’ve only ever been known to them in the context of my treatment. Kind of makes sense when you think about it. I mean, if I find seeing a neighbour in the gym disconcerting, I can sort of imagine how it might seem at least as weird when someone you used to see every day and haven’t seen for a while appears looking completely different and in the middle of an experience of which you (ideally) have no direct experience, and certainly wouldn’t wish to.

Hmmm. That ‘looking completely different’ thing. Maybe that ex neighbour isn’t so much avoiding eye contact as completely failing to recognise me. Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t be such a bad thing: I’d certainly like to think that in any context other than the gym, I look a lot less red. And a lot less sweaty…