Connection

Connection does not come naturally to me.  Part of my soul constantly longs for silence and solitude, something in short supply around my house.  Do you remember that scene in Date Night where Tina Fey's character talks about her fantasy of checking into a hotel alone?  I was so tracking with her.  It would be kind of like being a hermit, minus the poor personal hygiene and sparse diet.

So it's ironic that one of my favorite books is Howard's End by E.M. Forster, because Forster's epigram and main theme is "Only Connect."  The characters in the book suffer when they fail to make the connections presented to them.  In fact, the snobbish isolation of the main family, the Wilcoxes, eventually disgraces and ruins them, while the foolishly generous and warm-hearted connection of the Schlegels secures them an inheritance.

The Schlegels befriend a poor man, Leonard Bast, who works as a clerk in an office, a job that neither excites nor engages him.   Then one day, a description of nature that he reads in a book connects so deeply with him that he walks all night under the stars to recreate that connection in reality.  Afterwards, he can't keep from sharing his experience with real people.

I think that Leonard has to share his deep connection to nature with other people because we human beings are necessary to one another.  We rub off each other's rough edges and comfort one another in a way that no food or substance or indulgence can match.  We matter to each other.  We show each other truths and beauties that we would never know alone.

And when we finally "slipped the surly bonds of Earth / Put out [a] hand and touched the face of God," we turned around and looked at ourselves.  For the first time, we saw our fragile home: the small, warm island in an ocean of cold and lifeless night where each of us draws breath.  We are bound to one another here in a community of mutual life.  And one of the noblest and best jobs an author can do is to show us one of those small, temporary, momentous connections while it lasts.  Here is the epigram of our existence: only connect.

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