Connection – it’s what we all seek, I believe. To connect to others, to connect to the world, to connect to ourselves. The simplest of actions are those seeking connection. A hug to a loved one, a greeting to a friend, a smile to the barista handing you your morning coffee. If you wished to be alone forever, you would not extend the proverbial hand with any of these gestures. But we, as humans, do so and daily, hourly even. It is human nature to strive for connection.

For something we all naturally strive for, however, connection is all too often too hard to find. How is it possible to truly connect with another person? To know another’s inner most self and truly understand him or her? To walk the mile in another’s shoes? I don’t entirely see how stealing someone’s footwear can really help a person to understand who they are. It would probably be better to walk a mile in another’s skin, to have a better chance of understanding who that person truly is, but I assume that image was simply too gross to catch on. But even if you were to inhabit another person’s body for a mile, you could never truly inhabit another person’s mind and that is where the block happens. How do you connect when you cannot possibly know another person’s mind as well as your own?

And do you even know your own mind? We as human beings are constantly growing and changing, physically and emotionally. We are not rocks, stagnant and unmoving. One day we know everything about ourselves and the next day a stranger is looking back from the mirror. How do you connect then with someone else when you might not even know your own mind? How do you connect to yourself, to truly understand who you are as a person? Ultimately, is it even possible?

Stories are the bridge. It’s no longer you seeking the connection. It’s John Smith. It’s Hermione Granger. It’s Othello. It’s Jane Doe. It’s the versions of fictional characters or historical people written in words speaking from the page. The distance of the page creates a bridge of connection. I may never be a witch (much to my chagrin) but I can understand Hermione’s love of books. I may never be a man driven to murder, but I can understand Othello’s rage.

And because I can understand those things, through them I am connecting to someone. I am connecting to these characters, fictional or historical as they are. I am connecting to their creators, the writers who put them on the paper. Even if it is just for one moment, I am stretching back in time to Shakespeare and JK Rowling as they penned these words, comprehending perhaps the simplest of the thoughts and feelings that helped to create these characters. And I am connecting to whosoever else reads these same pages. Even if they do not feel as I do, they have read the same words and through that, we can talk about what we thought of those words.

Oscar Wilde once said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Telling the truth is hard because it leaves you vulnerable. Ultimately, that is why connecting is so incredibly difficult. It’s terrifying to be so open to the world, even your closest friends, even to yourself. Because what if the world, your friends, your family don’t like what they see? What if you don’t like what you see?

Writing gives you the mask to speak the truth. Reading gives you the eyes to see it. The page allows the writer to escape from him or herself and in that freedom, you can find elements of who you are, developing as the story unfolds before your eyes. Likewise, the reader escapes from him or herself when they immerse themselves in the page, escaping into the life of another and perhaps finding both themselves and the writer in the process.

We write to speak the truth. To ourselves and to each other. And through those truths, there is the chance to connect to the reader on the other side. Even if that reader is the writer, just a minute older than before.