Making a connection

Food, love, love, food. Are they the reverse sides of one coin or are they the backs of several coins. I've been thinking about the "uses" of food. Its a nutrient, it can be used to numb pain, it's a reward for a job well done, its a bedtime companion, its the closer on a great meal, its the second place prize after losing, its a memory, a place, a person or thing that it was served with before and its a road trip buddy. You can probably add several things to the list. I was thinking about it within the context of making contact. In the movie Crash, the narrator referenced how sometimes we run into each other just to make contact. That's my paraphrase not their words. I was thinking how we have all these ways of communicating such as email, text, im, social networks (myspace, facebook)cell and land phones. We have so many im accounts that there are websites where you can sign into all your accounts and talk to everyone at the same time. Yet from where I stand and what I read we are getting lonelier and lonelier everyday. I guess its like the hi-tech version of being in a room of crowded folks and still being lonely. Is that our parents/grandparents had it so much better or have we been tricked like the kid in the candy store? Look at the guy who shot up the gym. He wanted the attention of a certain type of woman and because he couldn't have that he committed murders. Thats actually a side note. I really was focusing on how it is that we are still not connecting. There are articles on how to meet men/women, how to flirt, how to make sure there's a second date, how to kiss, how to please him/her, and books on how to know if he/she's the one, how to get from dating to a proposal, and books on how to make friends, how to influence people, how to know what language someone communicates in and so on and so on. How is it that we have people yelling at each other in public forums, kids shooting parents, husbands killing pregnant wives, marriages falling apart, and so on and so on?
How is it that the nation of such great documents as the Constitution, The Bill of Rights, The Emancipation Proclamation, and (even if pieces were borrowed), the I Have a Dream Speech, is a nation of lonely, divided and alone people? You've got little old ladies with 100plus cats in their houses, mommas and their babies living without dads in shelters, kids growing up in foster care, and middle aged couples buying million dollar estates for just the two of them. Why aren't we connecting, and don't give me the nonsense about us being a transient group, parents and kids one place and grandparents another. That doesn't explain why we don't "love the one we're with". My brother stayed with my grandmother, my cousins while away at college lived in the home of an elderly woman who watched out for them. I know you have to be careful, but what has changed us so much that we don't reach out and we don't accept when someone reaches out? I don't expect an answer, but I hope you'll think about it some too. I think if we could start to address the why of that, maybe we could put a dent in the obesity epidemic. Think about it. You and I eat to fill needs...bet there are more of us around then imagined. Now at the end let me tell you what sent me down this road and why I think there are lots of us food "users" out there. I went to see PostGrad last night and I LOVED it. I completely identified with one character and my companion laughed at my conversation to the characters in the movie the entire time. But here's what caught my attention. One main character gave another character an eskimo pie and said something like it made everything better. Later in the movie you see someone else give someone an eskimo pie, and one more time an eskimo pie is given. That made me think of another use for food...actually two. Food can be medicine and it can be the opening to an apology, oh yeah how could I forget food is a great prop in foreplay, yummy!!!!!! Anyway, I digress. Here is this movie centered around a young woman just getting out of college and its already been imprinted in her mind to use food to cope. Hollywood imitates life or visa versa.
So you see, food is the medium by which lots of other stuff gets dealt with and covered. I've always heard that love covers a multitude of sins...but I say the word food is interchangeable in that sentences and serves just as "big" a purpose as love in some lives. So what does food connect you to?