My levels of political engagement varies with energy and the seasons. This is one of the times when my focus appears to be falling inward and when that happens, one of my favourite items of introspection is about connection and alienation, about the hunger for company and the dissatisfaction with the majority of it.

I’ve linked this to an idealised version of home or family before but I think that it boils down into an innate and as yet unvoiced hunger, maybe a hunger for something that one is concealing from oneself either out of habit or from fear or maybe because it is a nascent desire, something born from new circumstances, from the passage of time, from encountering someone new.

I’m not sure that being unconscious about the true nature of ones desires is a bad thing. It is possible after all to either unconsciously discover the solution or alternatively to find an acceptable substitute all without having to do any great amount of soul-searching and digging up of stuff better left buried or worse yet, discovering that what one desires is either unreachable or fast becoming unreachable.

I have several close female friends in their early to mid thirties who have known and always have known that eventually they want to have children preferably within a supportive familial environment but have not been able to find suitable partners. Perhaps it is because I love them dearly that I do not understand why they are having so much difficulty but I think I can be objective enough to say that I cant think of any good reason why. But the thing that affects me most is the sadness I see in them as they question their own attractiveness and their criteria for a partner all the while being aware that time is passing, all the while conscious of the importance of maintaining their dignity and self-respect.

The hunger and desire appears very real and very deeply felt to me and I wonder if, god forbid, should any of them not achieve the family they desire, what would happen to their spirit, to the way they face the world after that.

Better I think to always be seeking then to live knowing you’ll never get it.