How important is it to be connected? What is the first answer that pops into your head? Answers to that question will vary greatly depending upon many factors. A few of those factors include how you were raised, where you were raised, and whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. For example, I have a friend whose dad would come home from work and go straight to the garage for the next three or four hours. He made it clear he wanted to be left alone. I have another friend whose dad takes forever when he goes to Walmart or Home Depot because he likes to talk to everyone there about everything under the sun. My two friends have different views on connectedness, and if I introduced them to you, I think you would be able to tell who had which father. Most of us know that it is very important to be connected, and research supports that idea. As human beings, we are social creatures. Our social connectedness will vary with personality types, but some type of connectedness is instrumental to our mental and physical health.
I still remember going to the theater in 2000 with my mom (Oh, the good old days) and seeing the movie “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks.
If you have not seen it he is the sole survivor of a plane crash and is on a deserted island.
We see him go through the crash, realize his situation, and later dance around when he was finally able to create fire.
Then, there is a pause, and the action picks up after some time has passed. He has lost weight, has a long beard and shaggy hair, can spear a fish with no problem, and eats it raw (pretty cool).
Then we see how long he had been on the island. A caption crawls across the screen that reads, “Four Years Later.” I remember hearing a collective groan through the theater as everyone thought about how rough it would be to live alone like that for four years.
Sometimes we can get into a rut where we are not making connections with others. We might not be isolated for four years, but we need to monitor our connectedness to others.
I thought of three questions we can ask ourselves:
- What are the top three ways that I connect with others?
- Do I connect more with others through technology or person to person?
- Who have I connected with today, this week, this month?
As we think about the answers to these questions, we can truly see how connected we are.
If we find we don’t have enough meaningful connections, we can work to forge new ones and strengthen existing ones.