Category: Meaningful Connection

You know those moments that come before a group meal when everybody is lingering? Or after it’s over and everybody sort of diffuses into pocket conversations and side chatter?

That is where the magic of connection happens.

…Not when everybody is actively eating the meal. It’s in the moments that come before, the moments in between bites, and the moments after. In many respects, group meals have less to do with the meal and more to do with the lingering.

The same is true for just about every other group activity: group fitness, group sports, group art, group travel, group hobbies, etc. Of course, the group task is the focal point—but, most tasks can be done without the group. The point in doing it with a group is the connection.

Which may sound obvious, but in a world where loneliness is becoming more and more of a concern—there are two key ideas worth pinpointing:

(1) We do group activities for the group as much as the activity—you don’t have to be a prodigy or obsessed with the idea of the activity to sign up with a group.

(2) All of the time spent NOT doing the activity can be just as valuable (if not more) as the time spend doing it. Don’t miss the forest for the tree. Are you learning how to draw an eye in group art classes or are you learning how to draw a friendship by looking more people—who share similar interests as you—in the eye?

Lingering on screens is awful for connection. More and more studies prove that. Lingering in real life, however, is a great strategy for building 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.

---

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.