Connection Malnourishment

This is what I am craving. Connection.

As a clinician, I had lots of clients who were malnourished. Some of them very easy to diagnose, others hidden under layers of masking and avoidance. By definition, malnourished is someone with deficiencies and imbalances in nutritional and energy intake. When we think of malnourishment we may think of someone who is starving or suffers from anorexia.

Malnourishment can happen even if someone is overweight or morbidly obese, if the food intake doesn't include all food groups with a healthy diet. Malnourishment is not defined by kilos or shape, or looks. It is defined by what we choose to put into our bodies.

A malnourished person may not have the awareness that they are unhealthy. Whether that is due to personal limiting beliefs such as lack of education, personal bias and societal expectations. Let's not look far away. Just pick up any fashion magazine or look at any influencer's pics and the definition of healthy becomes very obscure.

Connection. Don't we all crave it? Are we really connected or are we suffering from a malnourishment of authentic connections? Thinking that our superficial connections fulfill our needs. Conditioned to accept whatever we have been told as the narrative?

If we take connection out of our lives, potentially it would have been much easier to exist. Off we go into our little cave and goodbye loneliness. But connection is a foundational force for our existence. Humans are not supposed to live in isolation, however you want to interpret isolation. Connection with our parents, connection with our family, connection with our community, connection with Mother Earth, connection with God, connection with the Self.

Connection leads to love. Connection provides safety and enhances our sense of belonging. Connection nurtures relationships. Connection is the motherhood of kindness, empathy and compassion. Nothing happens or nothing beneficial and of service when we are disconnected. When we are absent.

Someone would argue that in this day we are connected more than ever. Look at the technology, it has given us the ability to connect with almost everyone on this planet. Theoretically, any of the 8.3 billion people could connect with each other. YES…this is amazing! I can send emojis to someone in Tristan Da Cunha, one of the most remote islands in the southern Atlantic. So? Am I connected? …I crave connection.

Are we connected when we watch endless reels? Or when we respond to emails? Am I connected when I comment on my friend's photo of their Bali holidays?

Maybe we are connected when we have a chat about the house prices or how expensive a kilo of tomatoes are these days. Or what happens in the new season of Stranger Things.

Don't get me wrong. We don't need to have deep and meaningful conversations all the time to feel connected. Like I said I crave connection. I am malnourished of connection. I have been conditioned to normalize disconnection. To embrace loneliness as some form of resilience.

When was the last time you had a good belly laugh? Or cried uncontrollably with a loved one? Or shared your inner thoughts with a friend? When was the last time that a silence wasn't awkward on a table full of people? When was the last time you felt safe when you looked into someone else's eyes?

My questions are rhetorical. I am only reflecting from my own experiences. I crave connection.

Malnourishment of connection hides the deficits, hides the excess. Deficits of kindness, love and authenticity. Excess of information, polarization and detachment. Malnourishment may even feel, look and even taste safe, but within that "plastic" safety we only pollute our soul, compromising one of our fundamental needs.

I crave connection.