How can we make friends, how can we love — with half of our face covered all the time?

Challenges and disasters bring new worlds that we are not accustomed to, but they also bring new opportunities and exciting futures, if and only if you survive them. And in this new world where we only see half of each others’ faces, I am experiencing exhilarating new ways to make friends —something I’ve never imagined before.

Wherever we go — schools, offices where we have colleagues and friends — we don’t see each others’ full faces any more. If you are with the same group of people, it’s not a big deal. But when I moved to a new office, there were many people whom I’ve never truly seen, whom I now work with every day.

In a world where I cannot show my huge smile all the time, I learned how hard it was to communicate with muffled speech and my somewhat intimidating eyes. Without being able to see each others’ full face, giving each other a positive impression during communication has been quite challenging. However, we, survivors, adapt. We are all human beings. Soon enough, we learn how to have fun conversations, how to show a positive impression just with our eyes, how to read each other’s face, with half of our face covered.

And I realized, with a mask on, we are seeing more, we are reading more, and we are learning more about each other. It is not a lesser way to see and meet one another; it’s a better and deeper way to explore each other’s minds.

Our desire to care about each other does significantly more than just fill in the gap for the portion our eyes can no longer see. And I learn that with somewhat impaired “vision,” if you will, our other senses flourish, and we see and learn more important things that we should have paid more attention to, but haven’t been able to, due to distractions.

The pandemic taught us it’s a humane and natural thing to genuinely ask how each other are, even if we are strangers, because we share a common denominator. I find ourselves asking each other how we are more often, with genuine concern and interest. Just like that, we connect more with people we would have just passed by in the world before COVID-19.

An extraordinary connection sprung out of an effort to help each other, from doing something I would have never done in the prepandemic era. Of all places throughout my life, I met a person at a department store who shared the most similarities and passions with me, and ended up getting much needed information, care and help, all without seeing his full face. And I learned, if we start caring about each other, just how many hidden miracles can reveal themselves to enrich our lives — all the miracles we have missed.

So I answer: With half of our face covered, with more desire to explore each others’ minds, we will make better friends, and we will find a better love.

Oftentimes we learn and believe that we human beings are the major force dominating the world — but in fact, we can dominate only as long and as far as nature allows. Challenges like this will force humans to carry on. Just as the world today is so very different from just 200 years ago, the future will be vastly different than what we are comfortable with. But we will survive, and we will continue to live and love.

Yeoun Varley, who has a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of Hawaii, works for the U.S. government.