Connection saves lives, not engagement

​I was listening to The Minimalist podcast yesterday. They said there is a difference between solitude and hiding. Hiding, they said, is something we do to protect ourselves. Solitude, on the other hand, is something we seek to restore ourselves.

Most of my life I've said I love to be alone. I'm just an introvert, I'd tell you. More and more, though, I've come to accept what I've really loved to be is in hiding. Hiding from other people. Hiding from relationships.

For many people - and for many reasons - togetherness is a scary deal.

But the thing is, alone can be even scarier. When you are hiding from something you fear, there is nothing peaceful about that. There is nothing restorative going on. In many ways, you always have an eye staring out the peep hole - (or these days on the Ring camera) - to make sure no one is coming.

That is non-stop stress - NOT non-stop peace.

I am telling you this for an urgent reason.

I've been reading stories about the young softball player from James Madison University who completed suicide last week. I know very little about her circumstances or her life at all, so my thoughts aren't about her suicide - other than my heart breaks.

But my thoughts are more about many of the responses I read to news stories about that tragedy. Responses that questioned how a young woman who seemed so actively engaged with a team - so young and full of life - could so unnoticeably be in such pain.

Well, I just need you to know that 'connection' - NOT 'engagement' - is the greatest protector from the pain of loneliness. And engagement is not always the same as connected. Maybe even rarely is it the same. I've come to realize engagement is often a way to hide from connection when solitude isn't possible.

There are a lot of people who would call me a people person. Call me engaging. Funny. Charasmatic. But the thing is, when you are any of those things, you have a superpower of sorts that allows you to keep relationships above the surface. Superpowers developed along the way to allow one to hide in plain sight.

Hide from connection. Hide from vulnerability.

I'm grateful that the last few years I've had some connections in my life that have helped me come to understand this about myself. So this isn't a post to leave you worried about me. The fact that I'm meeting you here with vulnerability is a way of coming out of hiding. It's a way of writing to you from a place of solitude - which feels restorative.

No, this is about the people you engage with on a regular basis. This is a plea for you to make sure the people around you who appear engaged feel connected. This is a plea for you to make sure the 'people person' people in your lives actually feel like they have their people.

How do you know if someone feels connected beneath the engagement?

They are talking about the hard stuff. If you never ever hear the people you engage with most frequently talk about the hard stuff, they are in hiding. Because your life and my life - there is more hard than easy. That's a fact. You are either talking to someone about that truth or hiding from it.

The people in your life who can talk to you about the hard stuff - when they go off to be alone - chances are they are going off to recharge. They are intentionally using solitude for life and for energy. They are okay being alone because they are okay being together.

But disconnected people - for them, solitude is an insufferable place. Life can be every bit as exhausting and depressing hiding from connection alone as it is hiding from it in a crowd. Often more so.

It's mental health awareness month. And I need you to know that some of the people around us who appear to be the most mentally healthy - whether in a crowd or hanging out alone - are the most mentally unwell.

I encourage you this month - find someone. Ask them, "how are you?" But please don't stop there. Because "how are you" has become just another engaging question.

Take that question one step further.

Place a hand on someone's shoulder. Or take their hand. Or just look them in the eyes with compassion and curiosity and say - "no, really, I want to know how you are REALLY doing?"

Most of us have come to assume 'how are you' is an ice-breaker, not an invitation for connection.

Well, ice-breakers are costing us lives at an ever quickening rate. We absolutely have to stop losing lives to ice-breakers and start saving them with connection.

How are you? No, really, how are you REALLY doing?