Connectivity

Coming off the back of an amazing birthday, where my friends geographically close and far showed just how awesome they all are, I sit in an airport terminal turning my mind to connectivity.

Not just how you link your phone up, how many friends you have on Facebook or who you hang out with in any given week.

I'm even extending this beyond who you know directly and who you can have claimed to meet.

I'm actually pondering the far more primitive and far more pervasive connectivity that surrounds us at all times, which we barely even notice.

Think about a shopping centre. Think about a football match. Better yet, think about an airport, because its topical for me right now and will play to a later example.

When you wander around these places, just think about how many other people are there. I know, all faceless souls right? Well... Think about how many you look directly at - how many you wonder about or have a thought about. I'll bet you its a lot more than you imagine. That is a connection. Primitive, simple, but a connection.

Now think about how many you make eye contact with. That's definitely a connection.

Now. Think about how many must see you, mostly without you realising. That will be a lot of connections. Manifold ways that you have affected people in tiny, simple ways that you can neither know or understand.

Let's take my extreme example - you are on an aircraft. Look out the window, you're up high and you can't see faces. But how many faces are looking up at you? More than you can imagine. After all, how many times have you looked up at a plane for a moment and wondered who is on it or where it is going? All connection, no matter how simple.

We talk about how this can be a faceless, lonely world, but the truth is that if you are willing to look, there are connection everywhere. You are basking in the warming glow of your connection with the rest of humanity, washing over you at every moment.

And you didn't even know it.