What happens before connection?

Not the moment two people speak, or the exchange itself, but everything that precedes it, such as the attention someone brings, the presence they’ve practiced, or the years of small choices that shaped how they listen.

This is what I’ve been thinking about this week. And what I realized is that we tend to focus only on the encounter itself, but the encounter is only the surface. What makes it meaningful is what each person carried into the room long before they arrived.

This feels increasingly important to me as we live in a time where closeness can be simulated or optimized, and where machines are learning to say the right thing at the right time. And yet, there is something that cannot be replicated, at least not yet.

I think that something is the accumulated weight of having shown up, again and again, in ways that asked something of us. Or in just one word, presence.

To me, human connection has never been about efficiency. It has never been about saying the perfect things. Genuine human connection is built through friction, through repair, and through the willingness to sit in discomfort. When we speak to someone who truly knows us, we are not met with optimization but rather with memory, with struggle, and with a history of having been seen imperfectly and loved anyway.

This is what machines cannot offer. At least not yet. And I don’t think they ever will, not because they lack sophistication but because I look at empathy as a pattern that cannot be learned. It is shaped by having failed, hoped, and endured. It grows from the inside out.

As these simulations become more convincing, I wonder whether we will forget what the real thing feels like, and whether we will trade presence for something faster and easier, something that never asks us to grow.

I don’t think the answer is resistance, as I am not interested in standing against progress. But I am interested in remembering what progress cannot touch.

The imperfect, shaped by limits, mood, or a difficult day is the kind of attention that only humans can offer. And that is precisely what makes it real. When someone chooses to be present with us because they genuinely care, we feel it. We feel the cost of their attention, and that cost is what gives it meaning.

The same is true for how we encounter culture.

Before an artwork reaches us, someone has already been listening. Someone has already slowed down. The curators, editors, and each human itself, shape what we see, feel, and come to love. Their labor is rarely visible, but it is present in everything we experience.

How much of my own sensibility was shaped by people I may never meet? How their attention, practiced with care over years, became the lens through which I learned to see. Curation, at its best, is not about taste, but about responsibility, toward the work, the audience (which most of the time is just us), and toward the culture we are building together. This is what I often think about.

And this, too, in my eyes, is a form of human connection. It may not feel as direct as the previously mentioned one, but it is a relationship built through shared attention, trust, and the accumulation of choices.

In today’s age of artificial everything and one that is moving fast and seems to reward speed solely, the people who slow down become essential because I believe this is the condition for depth, resonance, and a meaning that lasts.

So I keep returning to the same question:

What do we carry into the room? What have we practiced? What kind of attention have we cultivated?

The answer, I think, is what makes us irreplaceable.

This week, I wrote about what remains human in a world where AI learns how to feel. The essay explores presence, connection, and the irreducible value of relationships built through shared struggle rather than optimization. If this resonates with you, you can read the full piece, Where We Meet, on The Hidden I.

I also shared a curation that looks at the other side of the same question. Not connection between people, but the unseen labor of attention that shapes how we encounter culture in the first place. A recognition of the curators who work before anything becomes visible, and whose care refined my own way of seeing. You can experience Before the Art on The Hidden I.

Thank you for being here!

See you next week!🌹

Eduard 🌹

What happens before connection?

Not the moment two people speak, or the exchange itself, but everything that precedes it, such as the attention someone brings, the presence they’ve practiced, or the years of small choices that shaped how they listen.

This is what I’ve been thinking about this week. And what I realized is that we tend to focus only on the encounter itself, but the encounter is only the surface. What makes it meaningful is what each person carried into the room long before they arrived.

This feels increasingly important to me as we live in a time where closeness can be simulated or optimized, and where machines are learning to say the right thing at the right time. And yet, there is something that cannot be replicated, at least not yet.

I think that something is the accumulated weight of having shown up, again and again, in ways that asked something of us. Or in just one word, presence.

To me, human connection has never been about efficiency. It has never been about saying the perfect things. Genuine human connection is built through friction, through repair, and through the willingness to sit in discomfort. When we speak to someone who truly knows us, we are not met with optimization but rather with memory, with struggle, and with a history of having been seen imperfectly and loved anyway.

This is what machines cannot offer. At least not yet. And I don’t think they ever will, not because they lack sophistication but because I look at empathy as a pattern that cannot be learned. It is shaped by having failed, hoped, and endured. It grows from the inside out.

As these simulations become more convincing, I wonder whether we will forget what the real thing feels like, and whether we will trade presence for something faster and easier, something that never asks us to grow.

I don’t think the answer is resistance, as I am not interested in standing against progress. But I am interested in remembering what progress cannot touch.

The imperfect, shaped by limits, mood, or a difficult day is the kind of attention that only humans can offer. And that is precisely what makes it real. When someone chooses to be present with us because they genuinely care, we feel it. We feel the cost of their attention, and that cost is what gives it meaning.

The same is true for how we encounter culture.

Before an artwork reaches us, someone has already been listening. Someone has already slowed down. The curators, editors, and each human itself, shape what we see, feel, and come to love. Their labor is rarely visible, but it is present in everything we experience.

How much of my own sensibility was shaped by people I may never meet? How their attention, practiced with care over years, became the lens through which I learned to see. Curation, at its best, is not about taste, but about responsibility, toward the work, the audience (which most of the time is just us), and toward the culture we are building together. This is what I often think about.

And this, too, in my eyes, is a form of human connection. It may not feel as direct as the previously mentioned one, but it is a relationship built through shared attention, trust, and the accumulation of choices.

In today’s age of artificial everything and one that is moving fast and seems to reward speed solely, the people who slow down become essential because I believe this is the condition for depth, resonance, and a meaning that lasts.

So I keep returning to the same question:

What do we carry into the room? What have we practiced? What kind of attention have we cultivated?

The answer, I think, is what makes us irreplaceable.

This week, I wrote about what remains human in a world where AI learns how to feel. The essay explores presence, connection, and the irreducible value of relationships built through shared struggle rather than optimization. If this resonates with you, you can read the full piece, Where We Meet, on The Hidden I.

I also shared a curation that looks at the other side of the same question. Not connection between people, but the unseen labor of attention that shapes how we encounter culture in the first place. A recognition of the curators who work before anything becomes visible, and whose care refined my own way of seeing. You can experience Before the Art on The Hidden I.

Thank you for being here!

See you next week!🌹

Eduard 🌹