Connections

Oh what a tangled web we weave, and not just when we practice to deceive (Sorry, Will!). We weave a spider's web of connections to the rest of the world every day that we live, every sphere in which we interact. And even when those spheres have no connection whatsoever, or so we think, we are often proven wrong.

Let me illustrate.

Today, I sat down at my computer and went to one of my favorite blogs. The top post there referred, in turn, to another blog, which I went to and read. Then I read the comments. One of those triggered something in my mind that sent me to that blog, and I did the same thing there as well.

I stopped this mad web of click throughs for two reasons. One - I landed on a blog where the writer doesn't live far from me so I was curious to read their take on things; and Two - the topic itself. The writer was talking about connections, which inspired me to reflect on the clickery that landed me in his piece of the web....

However, in his piece, he focused on connections to the past, and how we hold on to items that remind us of people and times we can't recapture. We are a nation of packrats. But why are we keeping that thank you note from the baby shower gift of someone we haven't seen in three years? Why does that stuffed animal from the ex-boyfriend still grace the shelf of our closet instead of some child's bed? Are we holding onto the things because we can't hold on to the people who gave them to us? Is this our own futile attempt to stop time - by keeping mementos of better days out in plain view where they co-exist with our own current status?

Which brings me back to the beginning. Walk through your house. Look at the little things....not the painting on the wall or the dishes in the cabinet, but the books on the shelves, the earrings in your jewelry box, the CDs by the stereo. Who gave them to you? Why did you buy them? How long have you had them?

I'm sitting here at my computer, and without even leaving the room I can point to numerous connections. The vanilla body spray my grandmother gave me for Christmas last year. The Eric Clapton Unplugged CD that always makes me think of the night the guy I was dating at the time and I saw Clapton in concert doing blues - it was the start of an enjoyment of the blues for me... The journal that same boyfriend gave me when we broke up to help sort through where we went wrong. (Believe it or not, I never wrote a single word in it, but that's a tale for another blogging) . And there's the less obvious ones - the French-English dictionary I bought long ago because I loved my high school French teacher and that's the one she recommended...the shotglass collection inspired by my aunt...

There's a connection there to someone or something gone by...a situation or person you may not have thought of in a long time, but if you stop and ponder a moment, it's there. The people with whom you've come in contact with have influenced your life whether they know it or not, whether you acknowledge it or not. You have done the same to other people, whether they've told you so or not, whether they even know it themselves or not.

Rather impressive, and at the same time rather daunting, eh?