Tag Archives: Connection

On My Mind

(Dis)connection

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I’ve been at a loss for words lately. I’ve been doing a lot of writing but abandoning drafts half formed, a lot of thinking but letting the thoughts go before uncovering them, playing with them, sharing them. I finished three (or was it four?) books this week, hoping their words would color the ideas I can’t seem to articulate.

A total sense of detachment from my own thoughts is strange. It’s like I’m watching myself try to figure out what I want to say and how I want to say it, staring out the windows of this café, half-noticing the people walking across the street. My own thoughts float lazily back to me, reminders that they’re there if I want to find them, introduce them to each other, engage with whatever is tugging at the back of my mind.

I’m an observer to my own mind. I’m lucid dreaming while awake.

On the surface, I’m preoccupied with a field trip, modified school schedules, papers to grade, end-of-year projects to implement. I can’t stop reading about healthcare and I can’t shake a deep sense of insecurity that I can’t quite place.

Oddly, however, discounting the healthcare travesty for the moment, it’s been a truly wonderful week. School was busy and productive and I laughed a lot. There was also a lot of socializing, which, while typical of my life in general, has not been typical of my life in New York. As usual when things happen, everything is happening all at once.

And that leaves me nostalgic.

I’m moving again over the summer (details on that after three more pieces of paper are finalized and signed) and that means starting over. When I know I’m about to say goodbye, I grow reluctant to do it. I grow more forgiving of the irritations and inconveniences I encounter, and begin to see them as endearing idiosyncrasies rather than sources of frustrations. I become aware of opportunities I haven’t taken, people I haven’t truly gotten to know, foods I haven’t tried, neighborhoods I haven’t explored, music I haven’t heard, sights I haven’t seen. As I make preparations to move for the fourth time in as many years, I begin to drag my feet, making mental (and sometimes physical) notes of what I’ll miss.

It’s never easy to leave.

And sometimes, it’s equally difficult to go.

I’ve learned that there’s a difference between leaving and going. The former means packing a life into boxes, hugging the people who have gone from being strangers to being friends, leaving the keys on the table, and waving goodbye. It’s a deliberate decision to stop turning back. It’s an exhale, a sigh, a conclusion. The latter is the first step forward, checking the time and setting the GPS, or handing over a passport to gate agents. It’s about deciding to take a chance, a gamble, a deep inhale. In going somewhere new, you’re supposed to be ready for anything. Otherwise, why go?

I didn’t do any of that when I moved to New York. I turned around in Singapore’s Changi Airport one more time after clearing passport control, and that was when I knew I was heading down a road leading to a very different future than the one I hadn’t admitted I was hoping for.

My mind has been spinning at night, which is apparent when I wake up before my alarm, when I look at my watch at the end of a run, when my dreams are fragments of conversations not had. I’m floating in between a life I might have had and a life I hope to have. Maybe you just weren’t ready, a friend suggested yesterday. I think she’s right.

What if I’m never ready? What if, now that I know what I’m looking for (including, not limited to, and largely involving authentic connection and collaboration with those around me) and what I want to do (change the world), none of it ever comes to fruition?

That’s the big step forward I mentioned earlier. It’s admitting what I’m looking for and want to do and committing to that. It’s dedicating my actions, relationships, and career to those things rather than trying to figure out what those things are. And it’s daunting because failure, readjustment, modification, and heartbreak are all likely along the road ahead.

But so are success, achievement, happiness, and love.

Because that’s what living means. As it has been. As it will be.

There’s no stopping in place because places don’t stop. There’s no turning back time because time can’t turn. There are no crystal balls, nothing foretold, foreknown, or predetermined. There are roads, as Dante and Frost said, and some roads are less traveled.

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New York

Free Hugs

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A few days ago, I was walking through Union Square and saw a cluster of people (two men, two women, multiple races, 20s or 30s) holding signs that said “FREE HUGS” in large, colorful letters.

Before even actively thinking about it, I knew I was heading straight for the people with the signs.

I walked towards a man with a bushy brown beard who asked, “Need a hug?”

I made a sound that was somewhere between an embarrassed chuckle and a nervous giggle and replied, “Yeah.” (Truth be told, I can really always use a hug.)

We hugged, I thanked him and wished him a great day, and he sent me on my way with a sticker.

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Pretty good advice! Though not so secret if now printed on stickers.
Of course, I thought, noting the URL in tiny letters. Does anything simply come from the goodness of the heart? But then I looked up LightSourceTemple.org. If you’ve clicked on the link, you’ll notice what I noticed – the domain has expired. LightSourceTemple.org doesn’t exist.

So why give out free hugs? For a laugh? For fun? A dare? A cult initiation? Or because the world can be really hard and sometimes people just need hugs?

While I can’t answer what those four people in Union Square were aiming for, I can explain why I not only accepted the free hug, but also wanted it.

I believe very strongly that there is a lack of physical human connection in our society.

I’ve thought about this a lot but it struck me anew when I was recently in Israel with our eighth graders. After just a day away from school, in a completely different environment, open affection was acceptable and the norm. Even more illuminating, much of this behavior came from the Israeli staff who we met on the first day of our trip. It was perfectly fine to drape an arm over a colleague’s shoulder for no apparent reason. It was fine to say good morning with a kiss on the cheek. A touch to someone’s back was simply a way of saying hello.

We don’t do enough of that in the US.

While in Israel, I read Dacher Keltner’s Born to Be Good, which contains chapters on smile, laughter, touch, and love, among other things. He writes about oxytocin and its effects on our behavior, attitudes, and relationships. Humans need positive physical contact in order to bond, trust others, and feel happy. In more than one place in his book, Keltner blames the Puritans for the lack of lack of physical touch in American culture.

I mentioned the book during a conversation just before walking through Union Square and seeing the free hugs signs. A friend was talking about his frustration with the repressive nature of American society and how we don’t really permit deviating from the prescribed course of action (school, more school, job) to allow for authentic personal growth or exploration. Thinking of Keltner, I suggested use of the word “Puritanical” to describe typical American attitudes towards uncharted paths and lack of conformity to the few molds we have deemed acceptable.

All of this was on my mind when I walked through Union Square a couple days ago. Though the free hugs people don’t know it, they appeared with their signs at just the right time for me to say yes to their hug.

As a rule, I try to be as open with and responsive to others as I can. Accepting and being truly delighted by the free hug was just another way of trying to form a connection, however brief, with someone who was willing to be open, responsive, and vulnerable to those around him. Back in February, I sat down to talk to three men on a bench in Central Park for the same reason. When a college student who started a conversation with me at a nail salon last week asked if she could interview me for a school project, I gave her my phone number with true pleasure. I’m trying to make the world better, one positive interaction at a time.

We are all humans. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. If we can’t reach out and touch one another, what’s the point in living at all?

New York

Three Men on a Bench

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Last weekend I went for a walk in Central Park and had a fascinating encounter with three men on a bench. When I lived on the Upper East Side I used to run in the park almost daily, but never carried a camera (or phone . . . or MetroCard . . . or ID . . . wherever I run . . . at whatever time of day . . .). I often wished that I did, though, because Central Park is just beautiful. I always forget, however, that everything looks different in the winter because you can see through the trees. That means noticing all sorts of things that weren’t visible before, like skyscrapers.

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Perhaps more compelling, however, was another human-made object: The sign in the picture below.

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At first I grinned but walked by, not really sure if I wanted to engage in any sort of discussion with strangers. I’ve been trying really hard to meet people lately, but that still takes effort and I was feeling pretty good on my own. So I walked on by.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about that sign. Anyone? Anything? Really?

I turned around and asked the three gentlemen (yes, I know there are two pictured above) for permission to take a photo of them with their sign. After graciously posing, they asked if I wanted to sit and talk.

When I first moved to New York, my best friend told me that the best advice she could give me was to say yes to things. So I did.

For about 15 minutes, I sat between Sean on the left (or maybe it’s Shawn – apologies for not asking!) and Jared and chatted. Steve did some audio recording during our conversation to conduct a sound test for the web series they’re working on. One thing I do love about New York is that people are always up to something interesting. I always have a lot of questions about what’s happening and why, and was glad for the chance to ask some of them.

Jared asked what was on my mind and I mentioned politics because I’d been listening to a Sam Harris podcast on my way through the park. We chatted about that for a while and then our conversation switched to the experiences they’d been having when trying to engage people in discussion. We talked about how reluctant many people are to having a face-to-face conversation. People are very vocal about anything and everything on social media but talking in person is much more difficult. There’s a real vulnerability in sharing yourself with others. Despite how important authenticity is to me, which is one of the reasons I try to be pretty open on this blog, I probably would have walked away after taking my photo had these guys not said, “Want to have a seat and talk to us?”. Connecting with people requires a deeper level of engagement and commitment than a Facebook post, blog post, or tweet. It requires looking into someone’s eyes and saying what’s on your mind. That can be hard.

After my chat with Sean/Shawn, Jared, and Steve, I continued my Central Park walk with a feeling of buoyancy and euphoria. I had just sat on a park bench between two men I had never met and we’d had a perfectly lovely conversation about politics, the news, and the importance of being able to talk. I was glad to find openness and receptivity, which seem like scarce commodities in the often isolating world of New York City. The more I open up to people, however, the more I find that they do the same in return. So maybe that isolation is a shield, or a defense, for many of us. Maybe there’s a real desire for connection that isn’t being met because vulnerability is scary. Maybe the aloofness of many New Yorkers is just a mask.

I told Sean/Shawn, Jared, and Steve that I keep a blog and asked if they wanted me to share any contact information for them. So here it is! They mentioned that they were hoping someone would have a seat on the bench and just spill their heart out. So, gentle readers, if any of you want to talk to someone willing to listen, I can recommend three men on a bench in Central Park. I’m glad they asked me to stop and chat and I’m glad I said yes.

Gentlemen, thanks for making my day.