Looking Back to 2006: Making the Connection

Making the Connection
Original post date: March 12, 2006

You've just gotten off from work and decide to stop at the local market. After picking out a few items for dinner, you hurry to the express lane for checkout. As you stand in line waiting, you start humming a tune from an album cut of a music group from long ago. The sales clerk -- who you've seen countless times before, but have never spoken to -- looks at you and says, "Isn't that such and such a song from such and such an album?" Yes, you say. "Oh, I just love that song," the clerk beams.

In this brief exhange, you've established a connection with another person. Said connection can be short-term or lasting, but it is the kind of connection that holds meaning.

We make these kinds of connections frequently. We find out that someone knows a friend of a friend of a friend. We discover that someone else shares our love of cooking, hang gliding or botany. We delight in learning that a complete stranger loves the same restaurant we frequent or the same vacation destination we dream of.

More often than not, such occurrences happen completely by accident. There we are, minding our own business, when someone reaches out and a connection is made.

One of the themes I harp on here at TRT is that we humans share far more in common than the so-called differences that we believe separate us. We too often view people by arbitrary labels and fail to look for the connections that bind us. Instead of seeing a fellow human being, we see gender, race, ethnicity, and a slew of other arbitrary distinctions.

Both Lao Tzu and Jesus urged people to experience life like a young baby. Babies do not see a Jewish man, an Arab woman, a tall white person or a short Latino. They see individual faces and reach out to try to make a connection with whomever crosses their path.

Unfortunately, as we grow to adulthood, we lose this ability. Instead of trying to connect with others, we erect walls to separate ourselves. In doing so, we lose the opportunity to forge lasting connections.

In essence, we create our own hostile world.

To read the intro to this retrospective series of posts, go here.