Connections

Introduction

When I was young, I wanted to do well in life, but I was missing out on a vital concept that many successful people seemed to intuitively understand: I did not realize that certain people were especially important in my life, and it was absolutely necessary that I meet these people and have good relationships with them if I wanted to succeed in that area of my life. If I met these people, my life would go well. But if I did not meet them or did not maintain good relationships with them, my life would not go well, at least not in that area.

Connections in Film

The socially adept writers and directors of Hollywood movies understand this concept. In the Star Wars movie, Luke Skywalker is lonely and unhappy on a desolate planet. He wants his life to be full of adventure and excitement, but nothing ever happens to him besides taking care of his family’s farm. It was only when Obi-Wan Kenobi showed up and took Luke off his home planet that his life got significantly better. If Obi-Wan Kenobi had never shown up, Luke would have spent the rest of his life being a moisture farmer on that forsaken planet. Instead Luke went on to an exciting life saving the galaxy from the evil empire. Mr. Kenobi (if that is the correct title to call a Jedi master — the movie does not make this clear) introduces Luke to a whole new life.

Luke’s case is a particularly dramatic example of the concept that I am talking about. Other movies reveal this same concept with much less drama. In The Karate Kid, the new boy in town is being bullied by the local ruffians. He makes friends with his neighbor, who unknown to him, is a karate master. Eventually his neighbor teaches him karate and he learns discipline and how to defend himself against the bullies.

These characters in the movies were meeting people who helped them make the next move in their life or in one area of their life. These special people gave skills or confidence or opened up whole new worlds (literally in the case of Star Wars). While in some cases, their whole life had changed, in other cases, it might just be one area of their life. For example, in the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” his students learned how to play music from the gifted teacher.

Connections in Literature

After I started understanding this connections idea from movies, I realized the writers of popular novels understood it too.

In Les Miserables, the main character was sent to prison in nineteenth-century France for stealing bread to feed his starving sister. He served nineteen years, and then he was released with papers identifying him as a criminal. Life was very hard for him until he met a saintly bishop who gave him enough silver to start his life over.

In The Count of Monte Cristo, the hero is in prison after being framed in nineteenth-century France. In prison he meets a political prisoner who educates him, and before this other prisoner dies tells, he tells the hero where a magnificent treasure is buried. With this treasure, the hero starts a new life.

In Oliver Twist, poor orphaned Oliver is having trouble getting enough food and surviving. Then, in London he meets some people who help him. Unknown to him, these people are thieves who want him to join their band. Fortunately for him, he is saved by a very kindly gentleman that the band tries to steal from.

Connections in history

After seeing these things in movies and novels, I realized the same connections concept was involved in the lives of historical people that I had heard about.

William Wilberforce was an extremely popular and rich politician in eighteenth-century England when he decided to go on a tour of the European continent. To amuse himself, he invited a poor but smart friend to entertain him on the trip. This friend was an intelligent scientist and a good conversationalist. Unknown to Wilberforce, this friend was also an evangelical Christian. While they were bored in France, they started a conversation about a popular Christian book, and by the end of the trip, Wilberforce had converted to heartfelt Christianity. He devoted the rest of his life to infusing Christianity into politics, most notably fighting to outlaw slavery in the British Empire.

Hernando Cortez invaded the Mexican peninsula in 1519. He had only a small Spanish army of 500 men against the powerful Aztec empire which had millions of subjects. Luckily for Cortez, he met a shipwrecked Spaniard and a native woman who knew the local languages. With their help, Cortez was able to convince some local cities who were unhappy with Aztec rule to fight with him. While disease was important in his victories, it was only with the help of these two interpreters and the thousands of local fighters that he was able to defeat the Aztecs.

Albert Einstein had developed some of his basic ideas behind the theory of general relativity, but he did not have the math to express it. Without this mathematical knowledge, he did not have science, he only had unformed intuitions or hunches. Luckily for him, his former classmate Marcel Grossmann knew about non-Euclidean geometries. Grossmann introduced Einstein to these ideas and to other mathematicians who helped Einstein transform his intuitions into rigorous mathematical formulas. Without Grossmann, or someone like him, Einstein would never have succeeded in developing his theory.

connections in our lives

These movies, novels, and historical people helped me to understand an important concept that I was sure a lot of other people found obvious, but that I had missed: some people in our lives are simply a lot more vital to us than other people. Einstein needed someone to tell him about certain kinds of math and to help him learn it; otherwise, he would never have fully developed his theories. If Cortez had never gotten the help of the local Indian woman and the local Indian kingdoms, he would never have conquered the Aztecs. William Wilberforce would have been just another rich Englishman. Worst of all, Luke Skywalker would never have gotten off that godforsaken planet and saved the galaxy from the Evil Empire!

If we want to do well in life, we need to meet the people that are connections for us, and we need to relate well to them. Movies, novels, and the historical people that I mentioned are particularly dramatic examples of this phenomenon. After all, we are entertained by movies or novels because they condense a story and highlight the most engaging parts of it. And we remember Wilberforce, Cortez, and Einstein because they were special. But basically all of us have examples of the same connection phenomena in our lives, although they are most likely not as dramatic or intense as in movies or novels.

On the most basic level, someone had to give us food and shelter when we were young and helpless. This someone may not have been a loving parent, it may even have been a wolf like the one who suckled Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. Without this someone or a group of people (or a wolf), we would not have survived.

If we were lucky, we met more people who helped us in other ways. We met someone who taught us about romance and sex. We met someone on a summer vacation, and she introduced us to some fun activity we never knew about before. In college we met people who introduced us to new music and new ways of looking at things. We met someone who helped us succeed at a job. If we were really lucky, we got married to someone.

identifying our connections

These special people could be our parents and could stay around our whole lives helping us. They could have been our coach at little league helping us for a season. They could be a stranger we meet for a few minutes at an airport telling us about the new restaurant we should be sure to visit. But all of them are more important to us than other people. You need to connect with these people and connect with them well if you want to have a full, happy life.

I call these important people connections because we have some special connection to them. They give us what we need in our life or in one area of our life. They give us what makes our life exciting and full in some important way.

I do not mean to imply that only people can be connections. A lot of other things can be connections too.

For example, animals can be connections. Many people’s closest friend is their dog. And what would Roy Rogers be without his horse Trigger? Or Hans Solo without his hairy friend Chewbacca?

Places can be a connection too. Personally, my house is my refuge. And for many people, they are deeply related to the land they were born on. In the movie “Gone with the Wind,” the lead female character was more connected to her plantation, Tara, than to any person.

Activities can be connections too. A lonely kid can make a connection by reading a book that fills her life with joy for a day or longer. Many smart kids’ childhoods were saved by discovering another world in reading books. Or someone can discover a musical instrument that they love to play. This instrument can then lead them to other people and activities. Or she can do math and find the joy of numbers.

An organization can be a connection too. A person can be lonely till they join the Masons or their local church.

A subculture can be a connection. My next door neighbor had a young daughter who was alienated from all the happy, conventional people that she called “the herd” until she discovered the Goths and found out that she was not the only person alienated from mainstream culture. While she now scares her mom and sometimes even her teachers with her interesting clothes, she is not alone anymore.

A car can be your connection. It does not have to be as nifty as the Batmobile, but it can be one your grandfather gave you or the fastest one on the block. Or it could be a gun, your special cooking pot, or your favorite knitting needles.

Finally, let’s not forget some peoples’ most important connection: a drug. It could be your heart medicine to keep your blood pressure down, your Viagra to keep your “happiness” up, or your Prozac or Panama Red to mellow you out.

The important thing is that with any of these connections your life or one area of it is made much better.

missing connections

I have been talking so far about making your connections and doing well with them. While meeting your connections makes your life good, if you do not make or maintain connections, things get worse.

While discussing making connections is uplifting, discussing missing connections is sad. It is sometimes so sad that I cry, and so I will only give a few examples of this phenomenon.

The Everly Brothers were on top of the musical world with many wonderful songs such “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake up Little Suzie.” Then they had a disagreement with their management company and switched to a new manager. Unfortunately for them and their fans, their songwriters were managed by their old company and were not allowed to write songs for them anymore. Even worse, they themselves were under contract as songwriters to their old management firm, and so they could not even write their own songs. When their disagreement with their old management company was finally resolved three years later, the Beatles had come to America and the music business had changed radically. They never had another big hit.

In one made for TV movie I was watching when I first discovered this concept, there was a sad character who did not do well in his life. For some reason, he did not connect with the person who could have helped him and because of this, things fell out of joint in his life. He was not able to be in a good place at a good time, and so things were always out of sync for him. He did not have the money he needed, and he did not develop a relationship with a girl who was interested in him. From the movie character’s perspective, he had no idea why things were so out of kilter or why he felt so lost with very little good happening to him. He could not see the connections he had missed. But someone watching the movie could see what he had missed, why he had missed them, and how missing them directly led to his problems.

Many people, when they miss their connections, know something is wrong in their life. But they have no idea why. They sometimes blame God and wonder why God does not give them a decent life. But God or fate is usually not the problem; it is usually that we are not making our connections. A spiritual way of looking at it is that God works through our connections.

Conclusion

We seem to have certain connections in our lives. Some people say that is God’s plan for our life. Other people say that we karmically attract situations and events to us because of our deeds in our current and previous lifetimes. Some people say we choose a life plan before we were born, and thus, attract things to us that fulfill this life plan. Others say it is destiny or fate. I really do not understand why we are connected to some things and not others or why some people seem to have better connections than others. But I have spent the last forty years learning how to recognize my connections, learning how to do better with them, learning how to learn from my past mistakes and not continually repeating them, and learning how to deal with the times when my connections were not giving me what I seemed to need from them. From this learning process, I developed many skills that you can apply in your own life — skills that can help you make your connections, and so make your life significantly better.

These skills will not immediately make your life wonderful. Nor will they bring you all your heart’s desires. But what these skills can do is help you make the best of the connections you have or will potentially have in this lifetime. It will not give you a perfect world, but it will help you achieve the best possible life that you can.

I missed out on so much in my life because I did not understand the concept of connections. And it wasn’t like I was a loser. People liked me; I went to an Ivy League college; I even had a family. But I was just missing out on a lot of things. That was a personal sadness for me. Yet, I hope it can be a tremendous positive for you because it made me think long and hard about this concept of connections and develop practical skills for how to do better with them. This personally difficult process helped me to gain a lot of knowledge that I otherwise would never have gotten if I was just naturally good at making connections.