Person to Person: Making Meaningful Connections in a Digital Age

In the days way before cellphones, if you wanted to call someone outside of your own area code you would reach out to an “operator” at the phone company for assistance.

You would pick up the phone, dial zero, and an operator would pick up. They had a few options for how to place this “long-distance” call.

And one of those options was “person-to-person.”

I always loved that term.

It meant you would agree to pay for the call if the person you wanted to speak with was available at the number you provided. If the person wasn’t there, the operator would disconnect the call and you were not charged for it.

The phrase “person-to-person” today reminds me that we have so many impersonal ways of reaching out to people and communicating with them.

I’m not saying email isn’t great, and texting is a quick and easy way to send a brief message. But there is nothing more powerful than a direct interaction with someone. Face to face. Person to person.

Although the pandemic is clearly limiting what we can do to get together, consider the safe ways of connecting with the people you care about. Person to person.