Love and connection

I've been thinking about love & connection & how it is one of my supreme needs. Perhaps born from a lack in earlier life, but also I believe an intrinsic human need that lives in all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not.

To connect with another human on a level that goes below the surface & find something meaningful, even if just for a brief moment with a stranger, fills something within me.

A conversation that goes somewhere unexpected. A moment of eye contact that holds a little longer than usual. Someone who says exactly the right thing without knowing anything about you. These small unremarkable exchanges remind me that the capacity for human connection exists everywhere, not just in the relationships we tend to & invest in over time.

Travel I believe, brings a deeper awareness to your senses & how you observe the world. It strips back the familiar & leaves you more present, more attuned to what's happening around you. Somehow in that exposure, away from the routine & the known, you become more open to observation, to strangers, to the quiet truth of what's happening around you.

This week, standing on top of Primrose Hill with an expansive view across London, I felt that acutely.

My attention was drawn to an elderly couple sitting on a park bench. Her voice was low, direct & certain. I sensed decades of something finally finding its way out. Her exact words were "I gave up my hopes & dreams to support your needs." She hadn't forgotten. I wasn't meant to hear it. I couldn't unhear it & couldn’t not be moved by the exchange.

What struck me wasn't the discussion so much, it was the longing underneath her words. To be truly seen. To have had her dreams matter as much as his. That need doesn't soften with age or time or decades of commitment. It just waits to be seen, expressed and understood.

We make choices in love that don't always make sense to others. We stay too long or leave too soon in the eyes of those watching. We choose people who turn out to be wrong for us & get quietly judged for it. We walk away & get judged for that too.

There is no version of loving openly that escapes scrutiny.

And yet it's in the making of those choices & in sitting with what they cost us that we slowly come to understand what we actually want & need. Not as judgement but as information. Every relationship that didn't work out, every person we chose & every person we walked away from become data points toward a deeper understanding of ourselves, if we're willing to look at it that way.

Part of that understanding is learning to express our needs at all. To name them without apology. To say clearly, this is what I need & then to notice whether the person across from us is able to receive that. Not just hear it, but truly hold it alongside their own needs rather than instead of them.

That's the distinction that matters. Love & connection isn't just about longing, it's about reciprocity. Two people who can see each other. Who can say this is what I need & have that met with genuine recognition rather than deflection or silence. That quality of being truly received by another person is a very rare quality to find in another. I imagine it’s worth waiting for.

The elderly woman on that bench hadn't stopped wanting that. Neither have any of us, regardless of age or experience or how many times we've been disappointed. The longing doesn't leave. It just gets more honest.

Whatever your relationship with love & connection, I think the world could use a lot more of it right now.