Isabella Tornabene
Professor Burleson
HMXP 102-007
October 23, 2013
Disconnection
Do you ever feel outside of yourself? Do you often wish you could have deeper, more meaningful connections with other people? You are not the only one. Most people feel disconnected from others in some way. Some people argue that the source of these disconnections comes from our own psychological battles, but I disagree. The disconnections that I find impacting my personal and school relationships come from the differences in social and economic realities between me and others.
The whole basis of connecting with people is finding common experiences that we can relate to or understand in a meaningful way. What kinds of people have experiences similar to our own, though? These people are the kinds of people who are in similar situations as us. That means that our social and economic realities block us from being able to feel connected with people who have different realities.
In my own life, the people that I have personal relationships with and hang out with are economically similar to me. Most of them are middle class people. I feel connected to my friends because most of our life experiences have been the same. When we hang out we do not spend a lot of money, but we do have money to spend. I feel largely disconnected to people who have more money than I do because they have opportunities in life that I do not. For example, there was a group of people in high school who I knew came from a better economic background than I did. I always felt very disconnected from them, like I was watching them live their lives through a glass window. They would go hang out at their beach houses, or go on multiple cruises together.