On the feeling of connectedness

1

When I was 23, I had a 16 year old girlfriend. It was a very steamy relationship -- we were well matched sexually, a very surprising thing given her age and our combined lack of experience. It was just one of those things, pure draw of chance: very intense and happy while it lasted, except, like most things in life, it didn't.

Many years later we met by chance. She confessed on that occasion that she had missed the way we used to feel connected: one soul one body, she said, a total mutual understanding. It was very touching to hear.

I didn't say then -- why ruin pleasant mis-perceptions, especially about our own selves -- but the thought struck me: the poor girl had had not the slightest inkling about the nature of the relationship! Because, of course, the reason why I left her was that, being a lot younger, she did not understand my world and could not keep up with my thoughts; and being of a totally different temperament she could not form the first impression of my hopes and plans for life; for these reasons -- and others -- she was simply not a suitable partner in my life at the time.

So, while she told me about the feeling of connection she missed, I thought to myself that the poor creature had managed to feel connected to me, while my feelings about the whole thing had all along been just the opposite.

How little in fact we were connected, and how contrary to her convictions, is perhaps best shown by the fact that she never understood why I left her: while basking in the feelings of great mutual understanding and connectedness she had had not the first clue of what was in fact long acoming.

Yet, she missed that illusory feeling; and refused to accept her surprise at my departure as evidence of its illusory nature. It had felt so good.

2

I have always attributed her naivte to her virginity. But now another friend, an adult male, 30, married, a man of great intelligence and vast reading, confesses to me that he feels lonely and unable to connect to people, women especially. That not feeling connected tortures him.

The confession is not a little alarming from a married man, especially since in one of his classes there has lately been a woman with whom he has been managing to connect by exchanging glances... But not to pontificate: the point is that the ocular footsie started as a glance exchanged in response to some drivel someone said. He thought the glance-exchange meant "Are you thinking what I am thinking?" Lately, he sent her an sms: "Why is it that I can always rely on you to catch my eye when I'm bored or amused?" She texted him back: "I guess we share the same sense of humor or eye for detail. I don't know, but I really enjoy it."

Wow. I didn't know one could derive so much pleasure from what was probably a random event. (After all, we accidentally exchange glances with strangers all the time; and there is rarely any reason to think we at the same divine their feelings).

You'd think that with his age, experience, and intelligence my friend would realize that there is no such thing as mutual understanding. After all, the mechanism goes like this:

a) an event takes place in brain A;
b) the body produces some outward signs of the event (or not);
c) brain B observes the behavior and from it deduces some kind of event in brain A; (the logic perhaps goes like this: his left eye twitched; my left eye twitches every time I feel irritated; surely, he must have been feeling irritated, then);
d) in consequence of this supposed recognition, a gizmo in brain B produces a feeling which we call connectedness -- or familiarity, or recognition, or eureka. (There is a brain module dedicated to the production of eureka states).

The point is this: the eureka experience is not directly caused by the event in brain A; and the chain of events by which brain B identifies the internal event in brain A is open to all sorts of errors. Thus when in the end the sensation of connectedness is produced, we have no idea whether it in fact corresponds to the truth. It's cognitive value is close to zero.

But the fellow -- a grown male, I repeat -- values the experience as much as my girlfriend once did.

A mystery.

3

In defense of his addiction to the feeling of connectedness, he proposes that being understood must be a universal human need. I am not so sure. Being understood -- or rather, creating an impression in another brain concerning our internal states -- is only important to those who operate within the social hierarchy and have something to gain (or possibly to lose) from the quality of impression created. Take a retired single man who has no need to superiors or frighten subordinates or reassure allies: what need has he of creating an impression in any external brain?