Get connected. Be connected. Stay connected.
I attended a large national conference on health this week and the theme was clear: connect. Connection is good for personal health. It’s good for society. It’s our evolutionary legacy, our enabling future.
It isn’t necessarily easy.
When I was around eleven, I built a soap box for the annual derby in Philadelphia. Construction took months. The day before the race, I transported my freshly painted race car from the basement of our house to the registration area in the parking lot next to the Philadelphia Art Museum. I got a racing bib and number. I parked my car in a line-up. I surveyed the other entrants.
I never competed.
“It’s time to grow up.”
Ugh! The words escaped my mouth before I could wrap them in restraint. It doesn’t matter that I often use the same words when I look at myself each morning in the mirror. They just aren’t helpful when someone else is struggling with their own feelings of uncertainty and inadequacy. Good sense, not emotion, had best take hold of one’s vocabulary in such situations.
“I got pole position, Mom.”
That’s what I used to say when, as a young man, I wanted to be first in line for my mom’s prayers. Poll position is the place that the lead car gets, at the start of a race. We didn’t watch car races when I grew up. Nonetheless, I knew about the concept of strategic positioning and its relevance to Mom’s prayers. Because she sometimes fell asleep in the middle of those prayers.
