Hungry for connection
Was Covid-19 the nail in this coffin for sincere human connection? We have never been more globally connected yet locally and within ourselves we have become completely isolated. If we are to agree that everything eventually balances out and that we need the yin to know what the yang feels like, is one of Covid-19’s side effects an affirmation of how far we have strayed from our neighbors, community, families and ourselves? Have you also been asking yourself who your neighbors and community are and most importantly, who are you?
About six years ago I decided to leave New York. I found myself at a juncture in my life where I felt constantly unearthed, up in the air from always being on the go and to carve out meaningful space with friends in an overstimulated world. I also started to miss my family in South Africa, especially our gatherings around food such as Sunday lunch, a family tradition back home. Not only did I miss the time to connect with my family, my culture and my country, I also miss what the time together and the meal communicated to me. Growing up, my parents never verbally told us that they loved us, however we could always feel their love, especially through food and around the meal table. Both of my parents were gifted in the art of cooking. My father, like most men, in the area of grilling and in making potjiekos (a South African stew cooked in a three legged cauldron over a fire) whereas my mother was the entertainer and magician in all things in the kitchen. She cooks, bakes, has the greenest thumb and has a creative flair for table decorating and flower arranging. I grew up in a home where emotionally challenging situations were not always addressed and unpacked. There was no such thing as a family meeting or questions around how your day was or what your highs and lows were. Adults were the adults and children were the children and the two worlds were kept separate. When I reflect back, I recall that we emotionally gave ourselves everything that we thought we needed. However when it came to food or being around the meal table, I could always feel the nurturing of my parents and their expression of love loud and clear.
For many of us, as we build our own homes and communities, our friends eventually become our chosen family. The law of attraction defined by motivational speaker Esther Hicks states “the essence of that which is like unto itself, is drawn”. As we attract people and experiences into our lives based on this natural law, I believe that we are guided towards meeting and bonding with like souls throughout our lives as soul families are drawn to do so. For those of us who value community, family and togetherness, we all feel too well the absence of it when our soul’s hunger for connecting through these bonds are not being addressed. It becomes a desire that is so great and the cause of deep underlying sadness and loneliness. I first became acquanted with this knowing while living alone in a beautiful home cooking for my single self on a Saturday night. I then enquired within just like all the times growing up when I needed to solve an emotional challenge, for the answer to what I needed to feel emotionally satisfied. The answer that eventually came was to have a meal with my family. At first, I was annoyed because my family was thousands of miles across the Atlantic. What came up for me next was that my family was in fact there - my soul and spiritual family, my friends. This confirmed another belief that I hold, that we always have everything we need. I came to discover that they too, far away from family since most of my friends were also from somewhere else or lived a similar lifestyle, were also yearning for the same deep connections. We only realized this until we started coming together regularly as the spiritual families of our deepest desires to commune, sharing our most inner thoughts around a home cooked meal.
Covid-19 and all that have come with it, especially the overwhelming amount of video calls have over the last year gradually exposed to us just how far we have drifted from what and whom is important in our lives. Our desire for real and meaningful connections, gatherings and sharing is a fundamental part of who we are. No matter how far we stray or estrange we become from one another; our souls know who to call on when it needs to be fed.