Before the pandemic, seeing your friends and family was a normal thing to do. No one hesitated to hang out, share meals, and or attend parties of people they cared about. These days, spending time together is almost always unheard of.
While we have to live with this grim reality for a little bit longer, perhaps current circumstances will cause us to be more thoughtful and deliberate about the messages we send. Even before 2020, birthday greetings and well wishes were often reduced to one-liner text messages or posts on Twitter feeds. Sometimes greetings were so simple, you only mustered enough effort to send a GIF or a stock image.