TSL_Connected People

In the age of social networks I am wondering how people are connected and especially what connects them.

A connection is defined as "a feeling of understanding and ease of communication between two or more people." They are typically formed based on belief, language, membership at clubs or associations, work, and so on. Blood relations are a special kind of such connections, either as family member or by blood oath. Such connections may then result in certain relationships, such as friendship, pen pal, lover, or work colleague.

Web-based social networks are mostly an extension of these relationships. They facilitate the sharing of information and enable people even to connect to complete strangers; as a saying goes: "Strangers are friends, you haven't met yet".
The personal and web-based connections are in most cases voluntarily and selective and as the definition suggests, their basic elements are impressions and communication.

There are other "elements" that connect people, one of which is air.
Air engulfs the earth and we feel it, or better its conditions, on our skin, the organ with which we also sense touch (an important aspect of interpersonal relations). Lungs are the other organs related to air and its processing.
In Japanese air is written as 空気 [ kuu-ki ]. 空 [ kuu ] stands for empty, sky, void, vacant, vacuum and 気 [ ki ] for spirit, mind, atmosphere, mood. The kanji 気 is used in many other words, such as 元気 [healthy, well] or 病気 [sick]. 気 or its Chinese equivalent 氣 stands for Qi or Ki, meaning breath or life force. So air is the "empty life force" that breathes life and energy into humans. The importance of air is also indicated in that it is the lowest of the 3x3 numbers (3 minutes, 3 days, 3 weeks); a human can't survive much longer than 3 minutes without air.

The other one is water. Water covers 2/3 of our planet and our body consists of between 50 to 75% water.
In Japanese water is represented by the kanji 水 [ sui ]. The same character shows up in 水曜日 [Wednesday] and 水星 [the planet Mercury]. The link between Wednesday and Mercury is also obvious in the French word for Wednesday, mercredi. Planets lead into astrology to which an universal influence on human beings is attributed.
Water may have a more local nature than air but through its cycle from sea/lake - evaporation - precipitation - infiltration - drinking water - sweat/urine - waste water and back to the sea/lake it is global. It is the second 3x3 numbers; a human can't survive much longer than 3 days without water.

There is another element that falls into the same category as the two above, earth.
In Japanese earth is written as 土 [ dou ] and used in 土曜日 [Saturday] and 土星 [Saturn].
So from an astrological point of view earth is comparable with water, but from a human perspective it does not connect as close as water.
The second group of connections is involuntarily but all-encompassing.

So the next time you befriend someone on Facebook be aware that you are already connected with that person... and nature as a whole.