CONNECTION—WHAT IT MEANS WHAT IT DOES
This little miniseries started with the notions of thinking, listening, and connection. In seeking peace and joy and in forming a new more free and equitable. Community these ideas are not sequential—you don’t have to get one first then the next and then the last—get little bites of each whenever you can and do so in a way that reflects your best gifts. Use each so that others can. Show their best gifts and the powerful change and growth that happens—the peace and joy that might. Be experienced-just might. Be amazing....just saying.
connection is one of those terms that everyone thinks they have a handle on, yet if we go a little deeper we might find some clustering of ideas might be needed to understand what connection means.
Loose connections—How many Facebook friends do I have? How about all my “LinkedIn connections or instagram folks? Oh yes and there are twitter followers. Come on twitter what are we a world full of cult leaders or TV evangelists? Just because you are connected with someone doesn’t mean someone is following you does it? Are people.really shooting for. Having the most stalkers and trollers? the language we use is important...how about we call the people connected with us our “love bubble.” Would we be more careful about who gets invited and more importantly would we treat the communications with the “bubblers more carefully?
Let’s let that sit a minute...
maybe it’s hard for some of us to understand connection, however, it is completely possible for most people to understand loneliness or the lack of feeling connected. Loneliness can be devastating when it includes a lack of connection with other people and w2ith the lack of connection with purpose. Let’s start with purpose.
One of the saddest barriers to peace and joy that has expanded over my trips around the sun is the growing uncertainty people feel about purpose. as our society has made it possible to be more mobile with travel options and cyber options the goals we all can choose have expanded so we can think globally. Unfortunately in order to find peace and joy thinking globally falls short if you cannot THINK GLOBALLY AND ACT LOCALLY. a true purpose needs to fit both ways. That is, it needs to be in locally and expand to the world outside—something larger than you. If it’s not larger than you why connect with anyone for anything? If you only connect with someone to use them...how rich are those connections really going to be?
The “demographics” of connection...
I grew up in the3 era of neighborhoods. There was a corner store that had an owner who usually put his name on the sign outside. Sometimes there was a little butcher counter in the back where some grizzled gent (who may or may. Not have set his thumb on the scale) lopped off some meat, grabbed the pencil that was always lodged behind one ear, and wrote the price on the paper wrapping...none of the plastic wrap designed to display the good side of the meat and to shelter the fatty side against the styrofoam package. there in your neighborhood was a church or two, at least one elementary school, a gas station that remarkably had gas, but didn’t sell diapers, 42 kinds of sports drinks,coffee, or lottery tickets, a drug store that often had a soda fountain a few small electronics, sometimes a comic book or two and had a candy counter like the little grocery store. the gas station, the drug store, and the grocery only had about one thing in common or maybe two things. First they sold bottled pop. If you lived. In a fancy town some folks called it soda. the other thing? The people. Running the store knew you. they knew. Where you lived. They knew your friends. They knew your parents. Hell they even knew your parents” friends friends. the owner either liked you or not and if not you hoped the next store wasn’t very far away. The neighborhood was the source of nearly all your entertainment and recreation and there was almost no doubt where one neighborhood start3ed and one ended.
We have lost neighborhoods... but maybe not forever...if we try hardship to recognize the value. You see we are in a climate where we expect law enforcement to take care of things that our neighbors used to. everybody had the crabby guy on the corner who yelled at you for throwing rotten apples at unsuspecting targets. Neighbors were a 24/7 surveillance network. ADT wasn’t necessary because Old Lady Johnson knew everyone who cut through your yard at a regular time and made sure people were informed if the neighborhood had any unknown visitors. Sure we didn’t have privacy...then again we had had community caring and pride. in a lot of small towns, especially small catholic towns, your neighbors were related somehow or when your kids got older they were going to be your relatives eventually so you might as well make sure these kids grew up smart and safe. Anyway ther was this connection space known as a neighborhood. We could learn something by hearing the stories about neighborhoods and. We could seek some peace and joy by constructing somew welements of neighborhoods in our lives.
so true connection means being connected to a purpose larger than us and being a part of a community—a neighborhood if you will. So what if we talked to each other enough to find out that others shared our purpose and linked our gifts. With those folks? Could we call that a (non-gendered) brotherhood? so.in seeking peace. And joy, I try for neighborhood and brotherhood when possible. It’s not always easy to be a “brother and a neighbor” to all your followers so in my experiences I have chosen a few people and worked a bit to have those roles. I then focus connection to the few and am open enough to invite others. To get a free sample...my blog and podcast are in many ways a free sample of being a friend/bother and neighbor of mine—by the way stay off my lawn—just kidding —however if you are going to have a bare spot where the pitcher’s mound. Is try not to stretch it out all the way to the home plate area.
The Power of Connection and Making Change Happen
Seeking peace and joy or having hope means experimenting and experiencing will need to happen. This is where the power of connection really happens. It’s where the. Rabbit gets pulled out of the hat—the place where magic is possible. when you are connected with a purpose and with others who share that purpose, you can select a change you would like to try and then your brotherhood can connect with others to share ideas and find resources. Your purpose can infect others who then want to be connected ands thencritical mass can be achieved. Or in other words the work leads to the rewards of relationship that can be “collected. The power of connection is in the the ECT model....
Select (a common purpose)
Connect your brotherhood with others
Infect the environment in a way that allows you to try new things
And Collect when you learn about the success or failure of your efforts and you can move forward in the process of seeking peace and joy. So select, connect, infect, and collect!
Some final words about changing the way social interactions could work...
the posts from the last week or so have been pretty “heavy doc”. I’ve tried to seat out some ideas and some tools that have helped me develop the best group of people I could ever hope to be connected with. sometimes my energy and gratitude hasn’t equaled the glow the universe has placed upon me.and all I can say is that every day I am thankful for those who think with me, those who listen to others who include me, and those who have stayed connected through my crazy journey. You people rock the world
No comments:
Post a Comment