Life is measured on a clock and supplemented by people. Like food, people fuel us with the energy we need or equally drain it. The nourishing ones and the difficult ones - all give us the momentum we need to move along the clock. We are influenced to take supplements everyday because the vitamins in our meals are not enough apparently. It seems it will go on like this until there is no money left to drive the need or until there is no measure of disease. We spend so much time thinking about how to supplement our physical health that we rarely stop to consider how we supplement our emotional lives.
You are what you eat, and you become the people you surround yourself with. In a world where competition is placed on a pedestal, we objectify people as if they are emotionless. We are taught to network, to date strategically and to seek relationships that benefit us. Yet every person carries a set of emotions as complex as our own. Human connection is not a solo performance but an orchestra where every individual contributes to the melody.
Solitude can take you far to understanding what you want. We are strangers to ourselves, and the more we sit with ourselves the more we discover about what we are capable of doing. Yet it’s only when we surround ourselves with people that we see the results of our growth. The people who enter our lives become mirrors. They show us who we are in that particular moment in time, reflect our nuances, expose our wounds and sometimes reveal where we could be if we followed a different path. Essentially, you see your past, present and future in them as milestones to your development. Every person you meet is a teacher, whether they intend to be or not. Those teachings are thrown at you based on another individual’s experience and accumulated knowledge, but at the end of the day we have the choice to decide what is relevant to us or not. You don’t become another person’s life, you become a part of it.
After my grandfather’s funeral, I found myself asking why people celebrate a person’s worth when they’re not in the room. Why do we wait for someone to leave the city let alone the earth to share how much they meant to us? Why let someone think they were resented their whole life and only become celebrated after death?
As I was discussing with a friend, we feel reluctant to say things like, ‘I had a good time with you’ often because we assume they already know. The truth is we can’t read people’s minds and we all need some affirmation even if we deny it. Humans grow through it. I’m a believer that good things said behind a person’s back, should also be shared to their face. We spend too much time second guessing ourselves when really a simple conversation could provide the answer. Judgement is inevitable, vulnerability is uncomfortable but words spoken out loud can stay with someone for a lifetime.
People will come and go, but it’s the memories that stay with us until we lose our minds. I’ve noticed that we tend to remember the beginnings and endings of relationships while everything in between becomes background silence. Yet it’s in these ordinary moments that connection flourishes. Meaningful resonance is found through sharing stories. Nostalgia exists because someone was there to create those stories with you. Recalling them reminds you that old is gold. That, to me, is the art of human connection.
Perhaps we also restrict ourselves through labels. There are certain things we feel we cannot say because someone is a colleague, a friend, a sibling, or a partner. We worry about giving the wrong impression. We hesitate to compliment people because they may mistake kindness for romantic love. We can’t disclose too much of our identities. We hide our flaws because it’s risky - we distance our true desires because of the fear behind losing someone important or being perceived as weak. Modern day relationships have become flooded with labels such as ‘situationships’ or ‘friends with benefits’ as though emotional intimacy requires justification.
Love does not belong exclusively to romance. I think platonic love is one of the wholesome ways we build meaningful connections. You don’t need one person to complete your life. You need a community. A kingdom, not a king alone.
I’ve learned the hard way that no matter how big or small a moment is, it deserves to be cherished with gratitude. We worry too much about how we will feel after an experience based on everyone else’s version of it instead of allowing ourselves to be present with our own range of emotions. That’s what differentiates our experiences. We don’t need to label every experience before it begins. Sometimes going with the flow can gift us in a way we never anticipated.
When opportunities for connection come your way, seize them wholeheartedly. You don’t need a romantic partner to make life romantic. A lifetime of romance can be found in watching the sunrise everyday, celebrating someone’s successes or telling stories to strangers that later become memories. You don’t have to settle down so quickly either. Pace yourself with what you have, the time that is in front of you and the people who walk beside you while they are still there.
Tell people you love them while they’re alive. Tell them how they’re impacted your life in whatever measure. Because the art of human connection is not formed in remembrance alone but the presence of being emotionally vulnerable.
