On Connecting.

At a basic level, we all want to connect. There are varying levels of connection. Connecting starts with the Self, the part of you that includes but goes beyond the ego or conscious mind, which is greater, higher, more actualized and connected to a source. A disconnection with Self provides an organizational process of disconnection from everything else. A human being can be profoundly disconnected with the culture, feeling alien and out of sync with the ways the world is going, disagreeing with prevailing beliefs and finding dominant paradigm lifestyles increasingly stifling. We are disconnected with our vocations, passions, or callings, often making the choice to work in a job we don’t love because of other benefits it provides. Perhaps most dramatic and sad is when the disconnects occur among our relationships to one another, be it peer groups, spouses, parent-child bonds, and any type of meaningful, dynamic and ongoing relationship.

The processes of disconnection are multitudinous and multifaceted, and very contextually complex. People abuse drugs. They zone out on technology, routines, and structures. Sometimes they focus on their feelings at the expense of logic. Or, they focus on logic at the expense of feelings. They isolate some relationships at the expense of others. Anything that numbs, disconnects. People find a way to weave in images and symbols of past wounds into today’s bad habits and neuroses. These images and symbols, that come to us when we feel the most insane, can also provide the keys to our healing. We disconnect because sometimes connection hurts. Sometimes our behavior is a confusing blend of connection attempts competing with disconnection attempts, mixed up with some instincts to heal and good intention, with a good measure of insecurity and bumbling.

Creating drama is a sneaky way of disconnecting, because to go into drama is to go out of a living, breathing interplay of two people communicating and to go into a character, to allow the theatrical mask to take over your personality.

The processes of connection carry with them risk and emotional vulnerability. It is often hard to smile, to open the heart, to accept influence, to risk hurt, to tolerate the ambiguity that human relationships inevitably bring. It is worse if you feel socially inept to make connections, as if your genetics, childhood baggage, habituated isolation, and lack of chutzpah all combine to make a cocktail of isolation and loneliness. Not to mention the often unbearable idea that your overtures for friendship, love, and connection will be met with rejection.

There is no way to really get out of that besides through, to take those risks, to connect, to reject and be rejected, and to just go about this messy and unpredictable matter of being human. It’s true what they say about a thicker skin. To connect is to feel all of those things you were avoiding by disconnecting. It’s part of the deal.

I could cite attachment theory, sociology, religion, biology, or any number of things to firmly place myself in the “connection is good” camp. But I think I’ll let my thesis stand naked, and say that both you and I know it's true.

It’s worth it.