Seeking connection

lessons of a busy Saturday

My plan for today had been to write about regime uncertainty, a term coined by the economist Robert Higgs. I will do that next week, as Higgs’ concept has influenced my thinking at both the macro and micro level. I changed my mind because I had an unusual day yesterday, and I wanted to talk about connection, one of the 3C’s of Meaning (along with competence and contribution).

As you know, I started back to training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu about a year and a half ago. I had trained from about 2006 to 2010 and had been a senior blue belt at the time I had to change duty stations and was unable to find a BJJ school in my new town, as BJJ was still emerging in the US at the time. Then when I retired and came to NH, I was just too busy (and made a lot of other excuses). Finally I decided if I didn’t go back now (now being summer of 2023), I was going to run out of time and it certainly wasn’t going to get any easier. So I signed up with Kevin Watson Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (KWBJJ). Kevin’s leadership of his school is remarkable. He creates a welcoming and inclusive environment that strikes the right balance of striving, competition, humor, and humility. Despite it being a great school, I struggled with getting to classes at night, and eventually bit the bullet and adjusted my sleep schedule and started attending the 5:30 AM class. What I found was that I could come up with a million excuses for things I needed to do at 5:30 PM, but there really isn’t anything one needs to be doing at 5:30 AM, other than being lazy and sleeping. So that has worked well for me, and I’ve found a fantastic community at KWBJJ, especially with the 5:30 AM Bruisers. So yesterday Kevin promoted three of us from the 5:30 AM class to blue belt.

The second thing that happened yesterday was I had lunch with two college friends. We have very different lives, but we try to get together a couple times a year since I retired from the Army. We’ve known each other since 1988, so we’re pushing 40 years of friendship.

I am a member of a men’s social club, and the third thing that happened yesterday was we had our annual Scotch tasting at one of the members’ homes. The club was formed about 20 years ago by a group of dads from the Durham community who had gotten to know each other through their kids' activities. As the kids aged out of the activities, the guys decided that they wanted to perpetuate their community, so they formed a social club. We schedule meet ups twice a month, usually at a restaurant or bar, to just chat and socialize. It’s not a networking, old boys club, though members do try to help each other out. The Scotch tasting is a nice example of the kind of thing we do together - we each brought a bottle of Scotch to share so that other members could try the different flavors. It’s sort of a pot-luck, except with bottles of Scotch instead of covered dishes. The evening was a few sips of Scotch and a lot of conversation about our lives, wives, kids, work, and so forth.

It was a busy day yesterday, but the point I want to make is that all three of these events were deliberate expressions of connection. The fact that they all happened to align on the same day was an accident, but the fact that they happened individually was deliberate. I’ve heard it said that men prefer shoulder to shoulder vs face to face activities, but I think that’s only partially true. It doesn’t get much more shoulder to shoulder than BJJ, and talking over Scotch tasting is doing something in a sense as well, but we all need connection. It is a fact that men are worse than women at having a broad base of connections. As men age, we tend to become more limited in our connections. Mens’ connections are often work-centered, and when work ends, the connections end, leaving men with few relationships. Men often don’t put in the work to create diverse connections (connections beyond work and family), and so they are vulnerable to changes, such as the loss of a job or the loss of a spouse (through death or divorce).

Connection is an essential part of striving for a worthy life. It isn’t a passive thing that just happens. It requires a continuous, dedicated effort, along with the other components of meaning. Connection requires continuous giving. As I am fond of quoting Aquinas, to love is to will the good of another. Connection requires that willing of good; it requires love. But it earns us love in return. I score pretty high on extraversion, so this may be especially true for people like me, but from the psychological literature on loneliness, it is clear that it is true for the vast majority of humans, only varying perhaps in degree. But it is non-zero ubiquitously. We are communal animals and we are made for connection.

Something to reflect on: what are you doing to care for your connections? How are you cultivating and diversifying your community so that you are more resilient to change?