A group of Buddhist monks is walking for peace from Texas to the White House in Washington, DC. Their walk has arrived in central Virginia, and I've seen many friends who've attended the walks posting pictures and stories of the experience.

My hope for this walk is that its real mission won't get lost in our own wishful thinking - our own desires - desires for world peace. Because I'm here to break it to you: world peace is never going to happen.

That is not hopeless, that's reality. Because world peace doesn't happen when the world turns peaceful, it happens when all the hearts of the world embrace peace. History laughs at that possibility. Even the bible I follow says at the end of the world their will be those who elected peace and those who did not.

Seems to me that is a division that has defined the world from day one to this day.

In a written statement, Bhikkhu Pannakara, spiritual leader of the Walk for Peace, said, "We walk not to protest, but to awaken the peace that already lives within each of us."

And in a blog post written by the monks on the walk, they say, "Our walking itself cannot create peace. But when someone encounters us — whether by the roadside, online or through a friend — when our message touches something deep within them, when it awakens the peace that has always lived quietly in their own heart — something sacred begins to unfold."

The monks get the path to peace. It's reaching inside the humanity of others where peace is born, where peace lives, and they walk to invite it out of them. To invite others to begin their own peace walk.

We live in a dark world. It always has been and always will be. But that darkness isn't and never has been a reflection of the world, it's a reflection of the hearts that populate it.

I love what these monks are doing. Modeling peace, not trying to force it. The world has long tried that approach - forcing individual versions and crafted frameworks of peace on the rest of the world.

Surely it's as obvious to you as it is to me that this has never worked.

The monks went on to say in their blog post, " "This is our contribution—not to force peace upon the world, but to help nurture it, one awakened heart at a time."

Peace will never be forced upon the hearts of the masses, peace comes to the masses through the awakening of individual hearts. Desires for world peace will always start with inward reflection, not outward strategies.

I am wishing the monks well through central Virginia and beyond. Not in the name of world peace, but with hopes that folks along the path of their walk will accept their invitation to experience peace within.

I cannot reasonable hope the world will ever experience peace, but I can surely hope the people I encounter on my walk through it will. For we each have a walk, one that walks as an invitation to peace or one that does not.

Either way, we are all on a walk.

​I think most days I get out of bed and I am quietly asking life this grand question, "Who are you?"

Lately, though, I've come to realize just how often I do not hear the echo of that question - how often I do not hear life asking me back, "Who are you?"

When I was almost 30 years old, I left Ohio, where I'd grown up and lived all my life, to live on the coast of North Carolina. I didn't know a soul there. I was taking on a job completely out of the realm of any work I'd ever done. Why? To be honest, it felt like I was chasing an answer:

Who are you, life?

Several years later, I got married. Something I'd sworn I'd never do. And really, up until just a few months before that marriage, it was a pledge I was fully committed to keeping. And yet, here was another big shift in life. And to be honest, it felt like I was still chasing an answer:

Who are you, life?

Nearly 8 years later, we had a son. This in spite of us agreeing when we got married that we'd never have kids. I don't know why I - and we - changed our minds. In many ways it felt like we were chasing an answer:

Who are you, life?

Twenty two years after I got married, I left that marriage. Divorce. Certainly something I swore I'd never do. And in many ways, I had reached a point in my life where it felt like life had no answers at all. The chase to find them had been pointless, I was starting to concede. And what is the point of life if there are no answers?

Yesterday, I left a job I'd been at for well over a decade. A job built on the work I started in eastern North Carolina some thirty years before when I left Ohio. For many reasons, this job had been the most meaningful job of my life.

As I walked away, I could feel the thunder of another momentous shift in my life. But I did not ask any questions. I just walked away. In silence. And it was in that silence that I think I heard an echo - life - returning the question I'd asked for nearly six decades.

"Who are you?"

Maybe life isn’t something I am to chase down and figure out. Maybe life has been moving toward me all along, shaping me, waiting for me to become someone who can finally say yes. Maybe I have never been the one chasing at all.

We go through life thinking we are seeking answers from it, and yet, all the while, it is life that is shaping the answers in us.

While we are chasing, life is molding. How different are they, really - the chasing and the molding?

It's true, life continues to confuse me. It can leave me feeling like there are no answers. But I am reminded lately, most certainly and profoundly in this writing, that life is not about finding answers, it is about becoming one.

I am a Facebook creator. I’m not entirely sure what that even means, but it gives me access to analytics. Analytics I don’t look at often, because honestly, my showing up here is far more about sharing than anything that can be analyzed.

With that said, I checked my analytics yesterday. And as you can see, they were all bad news.

Or at least, Facebook wanted me to feel them as bad news.

Why the red numbers? Red means danger. Bleeding. Error. Threat.

Does Facebook want me to see that I’ve lost 16 followers this past month and experience that as danger? As a threat? I think so, because for a brief moment, that’s exactly what I felt.

For some people, their bodies have a hard time distinguishing between someone walking away from you and someone disappearing from a screen. For many, both register as less connection than before. And for people whose stories include silence, absence, or being left, that signal can land even harder.

I find it interesting that Facebook, and many other platforms (I pick on Facebook because it’s my go-to), was built two decades ago on bringing people together. Yet now, it seems sustained by making people fear others will walk away.

Does it build by appealing to our shared longing to be seen and known, and then keep us hooked by preying on our shared fear of rejection?

But don’t worry. If you find yourself in the red zone, Facebook will offer strategies to fix it. Topics to write about. Ways to become more appealing. More acceptable. Maybe even some AI to help you along.

To what end? Lots of green numbers?

Green numbers that encourage me to meet the world where it is instead of sharing with the world who I am.

That’s where I eventually settled after the initial jolt of those red numbers.

I settled on a question. Or two.

Do you want to go back to chasing popularity at the expense of being known? Have you not run this experiment before - responding to red warnings in life by offering more of what you think will please others, while feeling more and more displeased with yourself?

Those 16 followers I lost? I have no idea who they are. I will likely never know who they are. How can people you can’t even identify as gone make you feel, even for a moment, like something meaningful has disappeared from your life?

I don’t know. I think red numbers play a role. Red numbers that stir memories of past rejection, or fear of it, far more than anything actually happening in the world of social media analytics.

And this is not lost on social media platforms. Understanding the science of all this is surely in their strategic plans. Hence, the red numbers.

So, for social media 'creators' like myself, I want to encourage you to look instead to the green numbers in your life. The people who are with you when life is red, or green, or black and blue.

Maybe that number is one. Maybe it’s a dozen.

Look to the people who are not up arrows or down arrows. They are simply lines in the sand, walking beside you. Parallel. Processing the stories of your life with you, not deciding whether they are worthy of a red or a green grade.

As for social media, if you want followers, write for followers. But if you want connection, write yourself. Your true, unafraid-of-red-numbers self.

​Someone recently asked me, “How can two people look at the exact same video and see two completely different things?”

They weren’t asking out of curiosity. They weren’t even really asking. They were making a statement in the form of a question. We do that sometimes to make ourselves sound more curious than judgmental.

Nonetheless, it is a good question to explore from a place of curiosity.

I fear many of us don't understand how our brains work. Each of our brains generates a model of the world. Our models are built on our personal experiences and everything we’ve been taught. I think we’d all agree that none of us have had the same experiences, and none of us have been taught the same lessons.

Here’s the important part: these models aren’t primarily to help us understand what we’re seeing. They’re there to help us predict what we’re about to see.

Crazy, right?

But our brains are wired to protect us, to keep us safe. And what better way to stay safe than to predict what’s going to happen next? If there’s a predator coming after me, I need to recognize an attacking predator before it gets to me, rather than analyzing what on earth it was after I’ve already been attacked.

This is how we’ve evolved.

So when it comes to our brains, perception isn’t seeing first and thinking second. It’s thinking first and seeing second. And because of our individual mental models, when new information fits the prediction, it feels true. When it doesn’t, it often feels wrong, even if it’s accurate. And many times, we’ll cling to an inaccuracy just to make things feel less wrong and more safe.

We don’t simply interpret what we see. We often decide what we’re going to see first, and then recruit reality to confirm it. Once that decision is made, evidence stops being information and starts being decoration.

Yes, I’m talking about videos. But this goes way beyond videos. We do this every day in our relationships.

So often we don’t meet people where they are. We meet them as who we predict they’re going to be. By the time they talk, we’ve already decided what they’re going to say. We’ve decided that even their kindest words will sound like attack or a rejection.

What’s tragic is that this usually isn’t malicious. It’s protective. Our brains are trying to keep us safe, efficient, and aligned with our mental models. But when it comes to the brain, efficiency is the enemy of curiosity. And nothing will kill a relationship faster than certainty.

Our instincts push us to decide in advance what someone is, which risks us never knowing who they really are. Our instincts push us to decide in advance what we’re seeing in a video, which risks us never knowing what we’re actually seeing.

Many will read this and maybe think, hmm, that explains THEM.

I think the more helpful way to read it is to wonder, how often do I think before I see? And if the answer is “a lot,” that’s okay. Our brains push us toward that.

The helpful approach is to take back a little control from the brain and incorporate another step:

Think. See. Then think AGAIN.

After we see, force ourselves into curiosity. Whether it’s during a conversation with someone we love or while watching a video, our brains want to tell us what we’re seeing.

Stop. Pause. Ask: Is that really what I’m seeing?

While many of us were braving winter storms this weekend, Alex Honnold was climbing the 1,667-foot skyscraper Taipei 101 in Taiwan, setting a record for the biggest urban free solo climb in history.

He scaled up the outside of the building without ropes or safety nets. For 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 34 seconds, Honnold clung to and climbed the outside of one of the tallest buildings in the world, knowing full well that any slip would surely be a final slip.

Oh, and all while it was streaming live on Netflix.

I found the picture below fascinating. A man inside the building photographing Honnold while he was climbing outside. What was the photographer thinking?

What did he see?

Did he see a superhuman, or a human doing super things?

Did he see a man too crazy to know the risks of climbing without ropes, or a man who'd become so sure of what he was capable of that he no longer needed ropes?

Did he wonder at all what he might be capable of if he'd let go of his need for safety and take a few more risks of his own in life?

I wonder all of these things about the photographer because these are some of the things I wondered about myself when watching highlights of the climb yesterday.

I don't think we're all supposed to go climb skyscrapers without ropes (most of us probably shouldn't even attempt it WITH ropes). But I think it's always worth considering what ropes we're still clinging to that might be worth dropping. What are we taking pictures of that we could be doing instead? How much of our lives have we turned over to being in awe in exchange for not creating awe?

I love watching other humans do what looks like superhuman things. It leaves me wondering how much super I'm leaving untapped inside this human.

We're not all meant to climb buildings, but I think we're all capable of climbing a little bit more than we currently climb. By all means, keep photographing and celebrating the humans around you, just don't forget to climb all that you are made to climb.

​Several years ago, I had a friend lecture me about guns. This in response to me telling him I'd never in my life owned a gun, and that I couldn't imagine a circumstance that would change that.

I assured him this was not an anti-gun ownership stance, but rather, a choice that personally worked best for me.

My friend proceeded to tell me that as a father, this was an irresponsible choice. He told me I had an obligation to protect my family against anyone that might try to invade my home.

I told him that I understood why he chose to include gun ownership in his responsibilities as a father, but for me, I knew anything that might happen to my two young boys because I DID own a gun would haunt me more than anything that might happen as a result of me NOT owning one.

Again, I assured him this was my personal reasoning, not judgment of his.

I also told him that I was privileged to live in a town and neighborhood that made such invasions very unlikely, and in the fifteen years I'd lived there at the time - non-existent.

He then warned me about my government. He said history tells us that governments can turn tyrannical, and that as men and fathers, we had an obligation to arm ourselves and protect ourselves from such a government.

I told him that as little as I worry about my home being invaded by fellow citizens, I worried even less about my government invading it. And even if they did, I told him, I don't think I could ever possess the kind of weaponry that would afford me any shot at victory should that invasion occur.

I told him I thought he was just a little paranoid. And that maybe he'd been spending too much time watching political talk shows.

We never spoke again.

If we were by chance to talk today, I'd have to tell him I'm a little bit sorry. I don't know, maybe I am even full-blown apologetic.

It's true, I still have no desire to own a gun.

And I am still relatively unworried about my fellow citizens invading my home.

But for the first time since our last conversation - for the first time in my life, really - it's no longer incomprehensible to me that my government would show up wanting to do battle with me. I am not anticipating it, but its possibility is no longer off the table.

This does not make me feel worried - or paranoid, even - for this home of mine here is not the home I live most to protect.

But sad; it does make me sad.

You grow up and live a life feeling grateful for the things you have seen and read about and are sure you'll never have to see for yourself, until one day you see them, and you're no longer sure.

And I guess that just feels sad.

​Last week, Dr. Mehmet Oz - Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services - responded to the federal government removing long standing guidance encouraging Americans to limit alcohol use:

Dr. Oz called alcohol a "social lubricant" - and said, "There’s probably nothing healthier than having fun with friends in a safe way.”

In fairness to Oz, he did go on to say, “In the best case scenario, I don’t think that you should drink alcohol.”

I think his remarks give us some things to think about. One, I am grateful for any doctor who will suggest there is nothing healthier than human connection. If more doctors would prescribe more relationships than pills, we'd be a healthier society.

The thing is, I think almost everyone knowingly or unknowingly craves relationship, but have a difficult time entering them. We used to be a culture that was built on relationships; we are now a culture trying to compensate without them. Relationship skills are not among our country's greatest competencies.

Alcohol, enter stage left. Alcohol can indeed make it easier for us to get out of our own way and into the way of human connection.

But some further questions need asking.

Alcohol may help us enter a relationship, but is it equally good at holding it together? If two people bond over drinks, will drinking be an equally good partner in solving the problems that arise when the bond encounters inevitable difficulties?

And another great question: once the bond gets going, does alcohol bring problems into the bond that would not exist without the alcohol?

Research suggests that anywhere from a third to a half of all divorces involve alcohol misuse. Research suggests a much larger percentage of inter-partner violence involves alcohol misuse.

But here's the thing, enough Americans have seen alcohol use in their families and in their relationships to know if alcohol is more lubricant than glue. We are our own research. I know I have personally met with many young people AND adults over the years who have wished people in their lives would drink less. I've yet to meet anyone who wished someone in their lives would drink more.

I have a personal story of romantic relationships ignited by alcohol. I have a personal story of alcohol playing a large part in blowing every one of them up.

Maybe alcohol is a social lubricant. But it's my experience that we need things to bring us together that are equally good at holding us together. I've just never seen alcohol be good at being one of those things.

I am glad we are having open conversations about social lubricant. I hope it invites us into more conversations about social glue.

​Mike Vrabel is the first year coach of the New England Patriots. He just led the Patriots to their first division title since a guy named Tom Brady was around - which makes Vrabel and his team quite a story.

Before their playoff game yesterday, one of the pre-game shows interviewed several Patriot players about "how did you do it?" The players referenced something that happened before the season, and off the field, as a big piece of their success.

In a team meeting before the season began, Vrabel asked each player to share their 4 H's. He asked each player to stand up and share their: History, Hero, Heartbreak, and Hope.

The players said initially they felt uneasy about the request - until Vrabel volunteered to go first. They said their coach being vulnerable felt like an invitation for them to do the same.

It's my observation that the leaders who don't lead well - who are leaders with far more subordinates than followers - skip this vital step that Vrabel put first. The step of connecting.

And the first step of connecting is always - "I want to know you."

Leading without connecting is managing. Or more honestly, it’s controlling. You can get compliance without connection. You can get motion without meaning. You can even get results for a while. But you will not get loyalty, trust, or transformation.

I see it often in the business world, in the pastoral world, in the coaching world - and really, quite often, in the parenting world. Leaders - those in some position of authority - who have no idea how to connect to another human being on a vulnerable level, so they overcompensate for it by doubling down on control. Intimidation. Fear-based guidance.

Without connection, people don’t follow the leader, they follow the paycheck, the rulebook, or the exit sign. I hear a lot about 'burnout' these days - and in many cases, burnout is simply a case of not enough connection.

None of this is surprising. Our brains are wired this way. They are always seeking safety - they most often feel their safest inside connection - and inside that connection is where they are eager to listen, learn, and follow.

When you stand up in front of a room of teammates and share your biggest heartbreak, and your teammates listen with interest and compassion, you feel safe, seen, and known. And when this is all arranged by your coach, invited by him, you're suddenly a player who wants to not just play for that coach, you want to follow him.

Some days the world feels pretty chaotic to me. I feel like that's because we don't have enough leaders. And I'm not talking national level politicians - I'm talking leaders in our families, and businesses, and churches, and communities.

We have too many people in charge who don't know how to connect (often because they grew up without it) - who do not VALUE connection - so they lead with control. And eventually, too much control starts to look like too much out of control.

If you want to become a better leader today, maybe ask those you want to follow you about their 4 H's. And when they look a little uneasy about it - you go first.

You lead the way.

​Yesterday, a friend of mine shared some thoughts and feelings on a recent event. Before sharing, she prefaced that it had been a long time since she allowed herself to share something "political."

Those quotation marks are hers, not mine.

But it WAS the quotation marks that made me wonder, what exactly does it mean to be political today? I mean, she wasn't writing about elections or political parties or voter registration or current legislative bills up for debate in congress. She was sharing her thoughts and feelings about an interaction between humans that turned sad and destructive.

She was writing about humanity; can we do that these days outside of the context of politics?

When I was young - some five decades ago - I remember our politics being a reflection of our humanity. I think today more of us look at humanity through the lens of our politics. When I was young, who we were largely influenced how we voted; today, I believe more than ever, our votes are a starting point for determining who we are.

Today, I believe we see interactions between humans and allow the politics we identify with to shape how we see, think, and feel about those interactions. I guess that's how these interactions become more about "politics" than humanity. I guess that's how we look at news stories and let our "positions" lead the way more than we allow our compassion and empathy to create a space for curiosity and exploration.

Curiosity and exploration, after all, is the recipe for coming together. But politics, I fear, has made coming together some sort of mortal sin, a sin that puts one at risk of being disowned by their politics.

This is no small deal. Because for many - and research supports this - politics has become as central to one's social identity as ethnicity and religion and nationality. I believe partisanship has become at least as much about belonging as it is about a label for our policy positions.

And I get this, because the other trend I've seen decline since my youth IS people's sense of belonging. Again, research points to an American humanity that feels as lonely and disconnected as it's ever felt.

I spent decades working with some really good kids who'd been involved with some really destructive gangs and peer groups. Groups and gangs that influenced these kids' thoughts and choices - many of which were unhealthy, violent and self-destructive.

Why would really good kids make such really poor choices?

Because fitting in - belonging - is one of humanity's core needs. Maybe its core-est need. If one doesn't belong, they will always have a heart that longs to do so. A longing that leaves many people vulnerable to saying yes to a chance to belong first and then figure out the direction and price of that belonging later. (Side note: many marriages and romantic partnerships start this way...)

So am I suggesting that Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians and Independents have become gangs preying on the lost and lonely? Not necessarily, but in some cases - yes.

But I do very much believe there are many who are lost and lonely and disconnected, who, as a result, are more susceptible than ever to adopt positions about humanity before fully exploring the human impact of those positions.

I wonder how many of us have not allowed ourselves to be as compassionate and empathetic towards fellow humans for fear it might look like a position not in alignment with our voting kin?

I wonder how many of us would be brave enough to express some measure of that compassion or empathy if it put us at any risk at all of looking like one of them (insert opposing political party)?

I am not relatively bothered by our country's political divide. I do, however, have great fear that our political divide has come to define the character and direction of our humanity.

Politics used to be a big part of us.

Now, I fear, it is us.