Category: Meaningful Connection

I heard a great piece of advice today: watch carefully how the people around you treat their enemies—because you may very well become one of them down the road.

While this might sound dark or pessimistic—in a world that’s filled with gossip, drama, lust, envy, greed, impatience, deception, miscommunication, frustration, pain, suffering, etc… I’d say it’s an all-too-common (and unfortunate) reality.

…Friends who were once inseparable, plotting for the other’s downfall. Family members who share ancestry, refusing to share a room or word. Lovers who make sacred vows, who later end up tangled in the nastiest of divorces.

The people who are able to stay calm towards their “enemies,” though? The people who learn to disassociate, detach, and move on? The people who can act with grace and kindness even towards the ones who they disagree with or who hurt them?

…Those are the people you want to keep around and form alliances with. And you’ll know—just from that one key observation at the outset… that petty battles can be avoided for grander wars. Wars that affect us all—not just them. Ones that pave paths forward, not continuously pulls both parties back to battles in ruins.

Keep it sharp in your mind: tomorrows “enemies” may very well be today’s allies. Watch carefully how your allies treat their enemies today. And (re)form your alliances accordingly.

Very few forms of social media give us the feeling of being more connected.

In fact, most social media use tends to have the opposite effect—it makes us feel more socially isolated.

And if I had to speculate, I’d say it’s because what most of us are optimizing for on social media is popularity—posts that get the most “likes,” comments, saves, etc.

But, optimizing for popularity doesn’t bring you closer to individual people. Just like trying to be liked by everyone is a great strategy to not be particularly liked by anyone. Lack of connection isn’t a byproduct of a lack of breadth of connections… it’s the result of the lack of depth.

In other words, what we’re missing isn’t popularity signals—we’re missing deep conversation opportunities.

If I think back to my school days, nobody wanted to be unpopular, but neither was anybody managing their social appearance profiles full-time behind a screen. When you take the screens away, people don’t get to edit themselves—they simply present who they are in real time. No filters, no perfect angles or lighting, no refined and uncharacteristically profound language.

Just people being their imperfect selves who are all figuring it out as they go.

This is what’s missing.

And if you’re feeling lonely, might I recommend a healthy decrease in screen time and a healthy increase in reality time. Allow yourself to be messy, mistaken, and odd. You might turn away the “clean,” “correct,” “popular” ones. But, the other messy, mistaken, and odd ones will find you and be so damn happy you showed up as you did.

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P.s. Have you ever been on this kind of blind date?

What’s further: the length from Earth to Moon or the length from eyes to soul?

Something inside me says that the length from eyes to soul is infinitely further.

It feels to me to be boundless, filled with a lifetime of experiences known and yet to be discovered that is only continuing to expand outward with each passing moment we’re alive.

And yet, in a world packed with and overly focused on commodities, the eyes of another can be mistaken as such—just another object blended into the world of things that lie outside of ourselves that has no depth beyond what’s immediately seen.

But, the same depth that’s inherently known to be buried behind our own eyes exists in the hidden space behind the eyes of every other, too.

Realizing this, we might begin to explore that space a little differently. Rather than quick glances and convenient redundant conversations—we might look into the eyes of another as an opportunity for other-worldly exploration.

…Because that’s exactly what it is when we commit fully to exploring that great beyond.

We are far more deep than we portray each other to be.

Giving is the easy part.

Giving means you have more than you need and you’re able to offer others some of what you have.

Of course, not everybody wants to give for the right reasons. Some want to give to manipulate—so others will be indebted to them and they can be owed.

But for many, this isn’t the case at all.

Many want to give simply because it makes them feel great inside; because it satisfies their nurturing nature; because they genuinely feel blessed, know what it’s like to suffer, and want others to suffer less.

Genuine giving is one of the most beautiful experiences on the planet for both the giver and receiver.

What most people don’t talk about, however, is the difficulty (and importance) of receiving.

For some, it’s because they’ve been manipulated through gifts and don’t want to be indebted to others—which is a terrible shame. For others, it’s because nurturing is in their nature and being a receiver of nurturing feels against their nature. And for others still, receiving conflicts with pride—it creates a sense of guilt because they weren’t able to acquire “enough” on their own.

But, without receiving there can be no giving.

And while it may seem like a prideful, honorable, noble thing to do—to reject gifts—it often can have the opposite effect. Once trust is established in the genuineness of the gifts (and it isn’t manipulative), receiving wholeheartedly becomes (what most people miss) a gift (and a damn beautiful one at that) in and of itself.

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P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.

Below is my highly refined checklist of what makes me feel like I actually visited a place when I travel to visit a place. Because as some of you may relate, there have been plenty of times when I visited a place, did some things, left, and felt like I didn’t really visit the place at all. The list below is my unique concoction of things that act as an antidote to that feeling.

In no particular order:

• One local bookstore
• One quaint coffee shop
• One offbeat nature path
• One unique-to-the-area attraction
• One conversation with a stranger
• One conversation with a local friend (if applicable)

…How about you? What makes you feel like you’ve actually visited a place when you visit a place? I’d love to hear in a reply.

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P.s. This was my vacation reflection from Monday, April 24, 2023.