The Conduit of Connection

There is an epidemic among us that has been permeating long before we were confronted with this dreaded virus which has worked to exasperate this epidemic. Loneliness. Before I get into it, there is a distinct difference between being alone and feeling lonely. Being alone is a healthy thing for us all. It gives us space to clear our minds, to focus, and to think. Everyone is susceptible to experiencing loneliness from time to time. It's that feeling of not having someone in a given situation or circumstance, it's that feeling of being misunderstood, it's that feeling of lack when you compare yourself to someone else and what they have that you convince yourself you want. What all these have in common is, like every other emotion and feeling, we create them and they are temporary. Every single mammal, primate, and human craves connection with one another. It's part of being a social species. It explains why social media has been such a boon over the past decade. It's also why we all need to work on becoming more emotional, not less, but in a healthy way. The thing is many of us lack quality connections in our lives because we don't really know what they are. The conduit of connection for us humans are our emotions and feelings. From this we create bonds, shared experiences, future dreams and hopes, and our daily habits. We form emotional connections in two realms however, creative or survival. Both types of emotions have their place and ins isn't "good" or "bad" but in the application of developing quality and healthy connections one is certainly more productive and healthy and that would be the realm of course creative emotions and feelings. We have tendency to go through life never ever thinking about this or learning about this. We just go through our lives led by our emotions and feelings never thinking about how they influence how we choose the people to be social with and the quality of connection we develop with those people. If you are fortunate enough to have had randomness shine a light on you and you were brought up in a psychologically and emotionally healthy environment which instilled these habits in you, kudos, but the majority of us did not thus we experience life very differently. The brain makes no distinction if a habit is good or bad for us, it only recognizes the repeated pattern of behavior then creates a comfort pattern. This is why people look for connection through anger, anxiety, jealousy, fear, uncertainty, abuse, and many other survival emotions because it's just what has been conditioned as 'comfort' but this isn't healthy and this is why; When you operate from a defensive position emotionally you effectively cut yourself off from any kind of growth. A survival state only does what it is programmed to do in that state, survive, no new information or data is received thus the dysfunctional cycle is perpetuated and becomes self fulfilling. It's physiological, it's emotional. The realm of our creative emotions and feelings provide stability, security and trust so that we open ourselves up and take in new information, data, and seek out new experiences so we can learn, grow, and improve. Experiencing and creating love, joy, happiness, stability, security lead to more of the same where as the survival realm is a closed loop that repeats. Obviously the million dollar question is how do we do this? How do we make these creative connections? It starts with our relationship with self. It is a mathematical impossibility for an individual to share with someone creative energy if they don't have it to give. It's like lending someone money you don't have. When we operate from the survival realm we are seeking. We need something, we are in lack, we want a void filled so we look to someone else to provide that for us. We are not whole. If we develop and build a strong internal foundation of our creative energy we are no longer in lack, we are abundant and we look to share what we have. There is a monumental difference in what we attract in these different states. Everything comes down to our habits. Developing healthy practices and habits of self love, self empathy, self compassion and self trust are critical. Again, we can not give what we don't have.