Connecting: Circular Thoughts That Lead to Nowhere

Sometimes I find myself pursuing a train of thoughts that end up leading absolutely nowhere.

Or, at least, they end up not leading me to anything I can use as the basis for a Steemit post, which was my original intent.

I just wrote some 2,500+ words on the topic of "Connecting with people at a SOUL level" and found myself realizing that I had taken on a topic that was more suited to writing an entire book, than a blog post.

At least a blog post that wouldn't send people off to sleep, within a few minutes.

I was inspired by the realization — which is not exactly new — that the "Holy Grail" of my life has always been to truly connect with others at a deep level; at a soul level.

It's not something we readily do, we humans. We tend to flail around on the surface of life; we want to have "fun" but we've never defined fun; we want to be "successful," but we've never defined success... at least not beyond the superficial.

Then we get all butthurt when we don't end up with what we thought we wanted.

We'd like to think we're growing as we experience more and more of life, but most of the time we're just playing the adult version of high school puppy love in which a good reason to date someone was "he has a cool car!" or "she wears really short skirts."

It's neither here nor there, just like "we both like sandwiches!" isn't sufficient reason to marry someone!

And yet?

We engage in variations of this, not knowing to ask the right questions and get to what lies beneath the surface until it's much too late.

Of course, sometimes we don't realize how much something matters to us, until we find ourselves sitting in the absence of it.

In a life far far away I helped my friend Jon with some design and coding for a dating website he was building, back in the day when such things were brand new to the world.

Some of his friends agreed to come along and be "guinea pigs" in testing.

One of the greatest insights about life and connecting came from one friend who meticulously filled out all 30 parts of his "dating profile" in detail — parts that most people just blew past and ignored.

The general opinion in the room (except my own) was that "nobody's going to read all that" and "that's not going to appeal to women," the latter because there was no bragging, showing off or exaggerations involved.

I still remember his response, almost 30 years later: "It doesn't have to appeal to WOMEN, it just has to appeal to ONE woman."

Trying to close the loop on my circular thoughts before they get too long, one of the things I've really learned along the way is that you can't truly know what matters to you about another till you truly know yourself.

Which is sort of ironic, because much of the time we don't actually reach that point until we've past the whole family, raising children stage...

I think about my dad, who didn't find real love and connection until well after he'd divorced my mom and turned his back on pretty much all the conventional social hierarchies, and was comfortable with being unashamedly himself.

Well, I am rambling, and I think this is more than enough for this go around!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? Do you feel truly connected — to YOURSELF? Have you ever felt truly connected to someone at a sould level? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2025.04.08 20:14 PDT
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