Now, that’s not the only kind of disconnect. There is a quieter kind.

A kind that bleeds into our lives without the ability to notice it.

Where you’re surrounded by the people you know, but somehow you feel completely unknown.

You laugh when everyone else laughs. You answer when someone asks how you’re doing. You participate in conversations. You scroll through everyone’s lives and watch people announce where they are, what they’re doing, what they’re eating, who they’re with.

But yet, something still feels absent.

We have more ways to communicate than any generation before us, yet much of our communication feels so hollow.

We know what someone had for lunch, and where they went on vacation. We could probably track the last 3 relationships they were in.

But do we know them?

Do you know what they think about when they can’t sleep?

Do you know what they regret?

Maybe we confused access with connection.

Maybe being able to reach out to someone at any moment doesn’t mean we actually know how to reach them.

And maybe that is why we feel so lonely all the time.

I crave deep connection. I think we all do.

I crave deep conversations, long talks at night, even heavy discussions.

I like knowing people, I like truly knowing them.

A few years back, I told somebody;

“I want to learn you like a book, and read every line. Every missing or damaged page, I will search to find and repair. I want to know you better than you have ever known yourself.”

Pretty good line, huh?

(Feel free to use that one. $25 per usage fee !! )

But the truth is, we are constantly witnessing one another without necessarily seeing them.

I don’t think the answer is for everybody to agree. I don’t really think that’s even possible.

People will believe different things. They will vote differently. Worship differently. Love differently. Build different lives.

And you know what, dear reader?

That’s okay.

The goal was never to fully agree.

The goal was to coexist.

To be able to look at another person and say;

“I don’t fully understand you,” but I still recognise you as a person.

“I don’t agree with you,” but I will still respect and love you.

“I might never see the world the way you do,” but I will try to, if it means understanding you better.

What would happen if we stopped treating every disagreement like a declaration of war?

What would happen if being wrong didn’t feel humiliating?

If changing our minds wasn’t considered weakness?

What would happen if we stopped asking, “Whose side are you on?” and started asking, “What made you feel that way?

Would we feel less alone?

Would we be more patient with one another?

Would we finally realise that underneath our arguments, labels, identities, beliefs, and opinions, there is still the same basic human desire;

To be heard. To be seen. To matter.

We’re falling apart because we’ve forgotten how to be different together.

And I wonder if the distance between us is actually as wide as we think it is.

Or if we’ve simply spent so much time building walls that we’ve forgotten we can still open a door.