IF IT’S GREEN IT GROWS

Life is another word for connection

In the age to come will everyone have their internet brain healed? Will resurrection even raise our human capacity to think and interact? I hope so. Because, right now, we are sliding straight into some kind of ditch - and the impact has dislodged our ability to communicate or ask another person even one question.

This is my basic test for maturity these days: when we sit down together, are we curious enough to ask someone else around the table a question? Are we interested in anyone beyond the borders of our own minds? Can we look another person in the eye and listen with a modicum of genuine interest?

It is a low bar.

I know.

But I’m willing to start right there.

I have this one friend with a million questions. He’s great because he’s just loaded with a sort of vibrancy and interest that makes him a magnet for wonder and opportunity. There’s a gravity to him, even though he’s not trying to be the center of anything.

Right now the pull is towards isolation and self interest. I think there’s a reason those things tend to go together. Life is another word for connection. Want more life? Seek more connection. And connection rarely happens by leaning back, instead it’s the tendril that reaches out and actively looks for something solid to hold on to.

Here's a habit worth cultivating: show up in life loaded with curiosity and a sense that there’s wonder, learning, and something compelling living inside the other people we are sharing space with. That one little thing not only makes one's life less lonely, it supercharges a million other things inside us.

Curiosity is evidence that something in us is still green - still reaching, still growing, still convinced there is more life beyond the borders of the self.

As a wise man once said: if it’s green, it grows; if it’s ripe, it rots.