Everyone seeks to connect, to make meaningful relationships, be it with a friend, spouse, partner, children, colleagues and so on. Yet, it is one of the most difficult thing to achieve in life.

I wonder why in a world filled with lonely people, it is so difficult to find the right people to connect with.

Why do we struggle so much in making the right emotional connect?

Is it that we are all guided by some impractical, fancy notions of connections that most of us tend to feel incomplete and continue looking for making the right connect.

Well, I often think when love and affection and understanding is what a human soul, even Andrew(my cat), truly yearns for, what is that stops us from accepting love that comes our way and look for what is not available?

Complicated!

Perhaps real love or that soul connect that is talked about is just fanciful.

Couples who stay together for a long time, having weathered many storms even tend to look alike, some how changing themselves even in appearance, it is really something!

To grow old with a soul of your choice is what each individual looks forward to. Someone who would sort of stand up for you, or someone on whom you can lean on and not be judged.

Yet, it is one thing that is looks to be most difficult, besides, there is no school teaching this either!

In ‘The Glass Menagerie’ by Tenesse Williams, the mother nostalgically talks about the many’gentleman callers’ who routinely turned up at her home.

Yet the man who she married remains visible only in a portrait hung up on the wall!

So well it is not many trials that lead one to the right soul. Maybe, maybe not!

Besides, one can’t always be at a ‘whole sale market for souls’, with cries like ‘le lo’ ,’le lo’, ‘ selling at half price!!!’

Seriously, because in giving, there is a lot of taking, in taking there is a lot of giving, that is the reality of the soul exchange!!!

W.H. Auden’s Miss Gee is a sarcastic take on a woman who is unfulfilled, because she is unmarried, therefore she is unloved, and has therefore cancer eating into her flesh and soul, with no bosom, thin lips , she is a non-entity until she reaches the anatomy table to be mocked at by Mr. Rose, the surgeon and his students.

https://www.poeticous.com/w-h-auden/miss-gee

That is how single woman came out in public imagination, whether it is films or poetry or novels, the rude spinster, who holds a grudge and is loud and foul mouthed is a stereotype all too common.

Her solitude is her failure, her lack of charm, her lack of worthiness, lack of desirability making her a sort of social outcast out to ruin marriages, relationships and what not!

Well, a single man is not considered a loser, he may even be a philosopher, a writer, an ascetic, a noble soul, given to charity and other humanitarian causes, where as a single woman is a thing to despise, to not trust and to generally keep away from, especially if she also happens to be confident and comes across as courageous.

A gentleman talked about ‘ khuli gaay’ ‘untethered cow’, in a discussion about women’s safety and security.

What said the women, who, what did you just say???

The man sort of stammered, fumbled and cut the talk, perhaps realizing he belonged to ice age or maybe slyly thinking the women might be horrendous, especially the ‘talking types’!

I realize I have been meandering but unless there is acceptance of people as they are, the real connect can never happen.

Also, why do some of us, want to connect to the self same people? Hmmm… not sure!