There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to. –Michel Eyquem De Montaigne
I don't do anything special here at Little Nuances. I write about life and in doing so, I tell you what I think and how I feel. Yet, several times a week, I'm honored to hear from readers who are touched, sometimes in ways I would have never imaged, by something I've written here. Maybe it's because deep inside, humans are remarkably similar to one another.
Most of us are lonely. We all want at least a couple of people in our lives who "get" us. We want them to know about and accept our quirky mannerisms. We want them to know what we long for and we want them to root for us to achieve success as we pursue our longings. We want a to be around people with whom we can let our hair down without worrying about judgment. But finding such people rarely seems easy.
So we turn to poems, or songs, or movies, and sometimes even blogs—all of which are generated by people, but always under the guise of creativity. Such creative endeavors often put a finger directly upon the essence of who we are in the midst of our struggles, and we rejoice in knowing that somebody else can relate. But we don't rejoice externally though. That's rarely seen as proper. Instead we rejoice internally—the place where most of us spend our lives hiding because we can bear the thought of someone rejecting us, or criticizing us, or laughing at us.
As a single guy who is nearing his fortieth birthday, it would be easy to give into the loneliness monster. He resides internally too. And as much as my spirit wants to rejoice when I make connections with people who understand and accept me, the loneliness monster wants to pretend that such connections don't exist. Or if they do, then they are misinterpreted, or fraudulent. But when I read quotes like the one above from De Montaigne, which he wrote more then four hundred years ago, the loneliness monster doesn't have a chance because De Montaigne confirms what I already know to be true. Living life deeply, in connection with others, brings immense pleasure.
So if an author, or a writer, or a blogger, or a poet, or a lyricist, or a script writer, or any other form of artist touches you by something he or she has created, then let him or her know. In so doing, you'll be not only make the artist's day, but you also experience the joy that comes from making a connection with a fellow struggler.
