Let’s be honest about what many of the events now being canceled were actually like. In how many of your work meetings were you truly engaged, and in how many were you secretly tweeting or on TikTok, waiting for the hour to pass? When was the last time a conference changed your mind about anything? When was the last time you went to a wedding that was truly different from all the other weddings you've gone to, reflecting something personal about the people being married?

In my research on gathering, I have found that so many of us are going through the motions when we get together despite all the aspirations these events carry to change us and the world.

Which is why we should embrace this season of remote work, Zoom meetings, live-streamed book clubs and Skype birthday parties. It is, amid the grimness, an opportunity to experiment. We won’t be able to fuss over the things I believe we have been wrongly fussing about for too long. We can’t worry about the fish knives. Or the stage lighting. Or the theme colors. Instead, we will have to focus on what we should have been focusing on long before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic: creating magic among people.

The practical questions organizers are facing (Do we postpone? Migrate online? Cancel altogether?) quickly transmute into a set of spiritual questions (Why are we doing this in the first place? Is it really needed? Who is this for? And who gets to decide?). This invites a set of questions that every gathering needs answered: What do we need in this moment and how might we gather around that?

These questions allow us to invent new ways of coming together during the pandemic — and perhaps after as well. When SXSW was canceled, Nina Gregory, an arts editor at NPR, tweeted, “What if @AmazonStudios or @netflix or @Apple just bought all the films from @sxsw and did a sxsw x streamer film festival, coronavirus edition. build online community around it. films get bought and seen. and the streamer is a hero to indie filmmakers and fans.” As an in-person gathering migrates online, the purpose may change. And that’s a good thing. It may simplify the event and reflect the deepest need of the community.