Introduction to Links

There are more than 6 billion people on this planet and half of them live in my city. Well, that's an exaggeration, but it feels true. The number is actually closer to 7.2 million, and growing everyday. Which, is still a lot of people to cram into one area, even one as big as the Bay Area.

Growing up in the 48^th largest urban center of the world gives you a unique perspective on things. Concepts like "crowded" and "traffic" have inherently different meanings to me and my neighbors than they do for my relatives living in the Midwest. And yet, I have also been lucky enough to travel to places that make this part of California look small, even downright quaint.

But no matter the size of the urban sprawl, I have learned that people are just people. Whether they are stacked up on top of each other in teeny tiny apartments that reach for the Tokyo sky, or nestled in prairie homesteads separated by miles of farmland, people are still... just people.

And part of what makes people so interesting is how they connect to one another. No, I don't mean the Kevin Bacon way of connection (although that's mighty interesting). I mean the personal connection, the series of shared moments, and the small things that add up to big bonds.

I call them links.

We want to be linked to others...we want others to be linked to us. That primal urge which made us gather around the fire to tell stories of past adventures is the same motivation that leads groups of giggling twelve-year old girls to swap make-up kits and thirty-year old men to argue football plays on Monday mornings. We are a species that thrives on being linked to one another, and we will use all of our tools in order to make it happen. There are blogs and message boards, bar stools and mixers, clubs for every possible hobby or thrill, dating sites and, possibly most prevalent of all, religion. In the end, they all feed the same desire.

Getting linked.

But...life isn't easy; and simply desiring a connection in no way guarantees its existence. That's where this book comes from. In the following ten short stories you will find the age old refrain of people very much like you and me who are tying to make or keep a connection. Some of them manage. Some of them fake it, hoping that someday it will be real. They are not allegorical or epic stand-ins for great and lofty ideals...they are just people (like your noisy neighbor, the woman in front of you in line at the Post Office, the guy who tailgated you last weekend on the freeway). They are just people who are caught up in the universal dance of striving to connect. Sometimes they succeed. Many times they fail.

They keep trying.

In a world with 6 billion people, it's all we can do.

Kaylia Metcalfe
June 2009