The verb “connect” is among the most versatile ones in contemporary usage. We turn to it to describe an emotional click with another person, but also to talk about the status of our (ever-proliferating) gadgets.
I thought a lot about the multiple folds of meaning in that verb on a recent family trip up the Sea-to-Sky gondola, near Squamish, British Columbia. I’m always fascinated by the aesthetics of engineering, and the Sky Pilot Suspension Bridge, pictured above, connects two previously-separate ridges with an elegant arrangement of cables, bolts, and planks.
A more cynical version of me (say, 2009-me) might have dismissed the place as a tourist trap. Yet the beauty of the landscape — from the Howe Sound below to the granite peaks everywhere around — made it hard to succumb to my (still healthy) cynical tendencies. I was there with members of three generations of our family, and the views on that dry, hazy day, while eliciting very different memories and emotions in each of us, most certainly brought us together.
In this week’s challenge, share a photo, a gallery, or a mesh of what being connected means to you. You may choose to focus on one of the verb’s meanings or on several, and you can go literal or figurative, abstract or explicit: whatever you see fit. I can’t wait to see the photos you share!
