Connect....

So we got up this morning to go on our hike and when we opened the garage doors and saw all the news trucks back again outside Brittany Murphy's house, my heart just sank. We could tell from the questions being shouted through the car windows that her poor husband had died last night and it was hard to drive and hard to just carry on as normal. I feel so sad for her mother and everything she has had to go through. The strangest thing that came into my mind was to "love your neighbour". It is so easy these days not to connect with people who are right next door. You mind your own business and shut your door and keep yourself to yourself, but sometimes it's important to take some care of the people close by to you. Extend the hand of friendship and compassion; but in some situations you don't know what to say, or whether to bother them, so you just say nothing. I think one of the biggest things we have lost is Community. Back in the old days, communities were communities and people looked out for one another and knew each other and rallied round the old and the weak and nowadays that is overlooked in our busy insular lives.
I think if there was one thing I would take from this, it's to try and take the time to meet and know the people living close to you. I remember when we lived in London, our flat was one of six in a building in Chelsea, but we rarely stopped to chat to our neighbours, we just passed each other on the stairs and nodded. Connection is everything in this world and it's important to make connections to make other people feel as though they are seen and heard and cared about and matter. That is so key to feeling a part of this world so let's all do what we can. All this technology for connection and what we really only know more about is how anonymous we are in the grand scheme of things. There are so many ways to connect with others nowadays and I think that's amazing. I have made some friendships on line with people all over the world and I treasure them. Facebook, twitter, BBM, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, text, phone and just saying "Hello how are you"......the more you do the better. “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
We had a nice weekend, dinner with Ryan Friday was the most fun ever, and then we spent the rest of the weekend saying goodbye to Kate and Rupert Friend and Sunday was Chris Dyson's birthday party at The Palihouse which was so much fun but now all seems quite a long time ago. It's a sad day, and I say a prayer and just appreciate all the little things just a little bit more today...“At different states in our lives, the signs of love may vary: dependence, attraction, contentment, worry, loyalty, grief, but at the heart, the source is always the same. Human beings have the rare capacity to connect with each other, against all odds.”