Connection

Connections are bonds between lives which produce meaning and happiness.

Connections are formed when needs are met. We seek to connect with ourselves and with others.  To connect with the life in us, we must be aware of our needs in each moment and meet them.  To connect with others, we must be aware of their needs and be willing to meet them.  Connections are the fulfilling of life.  Sustainable connections make eternal life.  People without connections are zombies.

Connecting with ourselves and others fills the measure of our creation.  Who doesn't know that this life is 'all about relationships'?  In this Ted talk, Brene' Brown says, "Connection is why we're here; it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives;  this is what it's all about."  The worth of souls is great, and thus, connections with them are rich rewards. 1

Connections increase happiness and decrease hurt through synergy and redistribution, respectively. 2

Connections increase happiness
Happiness can be pleasure, joy, or any combination of the two.  Joy is most distinguishable from pleasure by the presence of trust.  Trust, in this context, represents confidence that the enjoyment will continue.  We all have needs each day.  Because we are eternal beings, needs must be perpetually met.  Thus, connections are helpful when they endure, and hurtful when they end.  Trust is built as assurance of continuation is experienced.  Joy is the result of sustained connection.  A unique trait of joy is that, in the giving, taking, and sharing which creates it, no participant is diminished.  Joy is NEVER had at the witholding of another human's needs, even the giver's.  Joyful connection is synergistic.  In the absence of trust, or assurance of continuation, happiness is called pleasure.  Temporary joy is a non-sequitor better named pleasure. 

In a connection where there is trust, giving and taking is synergistic.  In a connection without trust, either the giving is depleting, the taking is dissatisfying, or both.  This happens whenever there is coercion in the process of giving and receiving.  When a person meets a need without a feeling of choice, they feel like they’ve lost something, and they will seek to have it back. Some time later, that person will come back around looking to replenish themselves at their taker's expense.  Whenever there is a connection formed without assurance, there is both pleasure and pain - pleasure for one and pain for the other now, and the reverse for each later as the depleted person comes around seeking to replenish himself.  Because this boomerang effect happens every time, life is not fulfilled in joyless connections.  

Connections decrease hurt
When we bear one another's burdens, they become light.  This occurs when a person reveals their hurt to another person and is received with empathy.  Empathy is described by Marshall Rosenberg and Brene' Brown basically as 'mourning with those who mourn.'  In the first place, for empathy to take place, another person must be present.  That other person must then hear the giver's pain and receive it.  The reception of the pain builds the bond and lightens the hurt in the giver.  "There is something enormously valuable when we are in pain to just having another person there in contact with it" 3.  To receive another person's pain, we must eliminate judgment.  Brene' Brown defines empathy as "the ability to tap into our own experiences in order to relate to an experience someone is relating to us."  Judgment is saying "I am not that," and so disallows relating.  Pitying pain with judgment is sympathy.  "Empathy is about connection; sympathy is about separation" 4.  MR says "the key ingredient of empathy is presence:  we are wholly present with the other party and what they are experiencing.  This quality of presence distinguishes empathy from either mental understanding or sympathy" 5.

There are varying degrees of connection with others.  Facebook testifies of different degrees of relationships.  Google + acts as a second witness. Connection with others can include the physical, but the greatest connections are mostly spiritual.  Though the science is forthcoming, physical processes are metaphors for spiritual processes.  Spiritual processes are just as real as physical processes, though they are more important and more meaningful because our bodies are temporary and our spirits are forever 6.  Spiritual matter exists.  We know this through science, intuition, and confirmation from God through various means, including messengers.  The scriptures say that our hearts can be knit together.  God and Christ are one and they desire us to be one with them.  Acknowledging spiritual realities can heighten the joy we experience through connecting with others.

God's goal is for all of us to be one.  God's commandments are designed to connect His children together and to Him.  Jesus saw sin as springing from unmet needs.  Laws protect our connections.  Laws circumscribe.  Laws' circumscription are the protective walls of our home - where our connections dwell.  When we are keeping all of the commandments, we are wholly connected to Him, and as connected as possible to others.  Becoming one with another person requires that both people abide all of God's law.  The breaking of God's commandments disconnects us from others, including God.  This is intuitive.  How can I bond with someone who isn't honest? faithful in marriage? kind?  "But whoso keepeth [God's] word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him."  Commandment keeping facilitates the creation of trust, which makes the connection joyful.

The greatest connections are the most rewarding and fill peoples' greatest needs.  Our greatest need is to exist.  Our Eternal Father ensures that we will all exist eternally.  Next, our greatest need is to be connected to the life within us; and then, to be connected with the lives within us.  By "lives within us", I mean our ancestry and posterity.  We are one link in an eternal chain, or rather, slinky.  

Ultimately, we receive a fullness of joy and fill the entire measure of our creation when we are fully connected with those who were before us, are around us, and come after us, eternally. 7  When I make babies (excuse me, when I help make babies), I satisfy that baby's need to exist just as my parents satisfied my need to exist.  I also satisfy the human family's need to continue to exist.  

The stars are sinners' glory.  They are individual lights disconnected from each other.  What would it look like if you took all the stars in the night sky and gathered them together?  You'd probably have a sun.  The sun lights up the sky with no darkness.  Stars do not.  The sun is the saints' glory.  The difference between these two kingdoms are the laws.  Laws circumscribe.  In this scenerio, laws would make possible the gathering by circumscribing the the light.
 
Connections with Omnipotent Beings
Connection with God brings the greatest peace, because He can do some hearty celebrating as well as some heavy lifting.  This is why connection with God, or knowing Him, is called life Eternal.  Remember, connections constitute life, so He says, "come to me, that ye might have life."  

When Christ says "come unto me," He's saying, "connect with me."  He says "come unto me" instead of "connect with me" because in our relationship with Deity, He is ALWAYS ready to connect.  He is always vulnerable, reaching out.  He stands at the door and knocks. 

God’s presence, through the Holy Ghost, is the greatest gift I know.  Job felt similarly.  Because connection can be formed simply by proximity, the presence or withdrawal of someone omnipotent stimulates particularly potent happiness or sadness, making our heaviest burdens light, or our greatest pleasures heavy.

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1 "If I were to give one piece of advice for how to be happier, it would be to carve out more time with friends and loved ones, because the best predictor of happiness is the quality of our social relationships" (p. 51). Redirect, by Timothy Wilson
2 Numbers 11:17  ~  Mosiah 18:8,9   ~   "For when many rejoice together, the joy of each on is the fuller, in that they are incited and inflamed by one another." - St. Augustine (354 - 430 A.D.) in The Confessions of St. Augustine. The Easton Press, 1979, The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written. pg. 128.
3 Being Me Loving You, Marshall Rosenberg, p. 20,213 
4 I thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't), Brene' Brown, p. 51

5 Living Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg, p.3.
6 Luke 5:17-26. Consider this story. Reflect on the reality of spiritual deformity/infirmity.  Reflect on the value of spiritual wellness over the value of physical wholeness.  Luke 12:4,5. 
7 see LDS doctrine of "Exaltation"

Needs

Needs can be thought of as resources that life requires to sustain itself.  Needs are indications of life.  The meeting of needs is the fulfillment of life.  

Living consists in being connected to needs and seeing they're met.  We can connect to our own life by seeing our own needs and getting them met.  We can connect to the life in others by recognizing their needs and meeting them.  

All people have the same needs.  Here is a list (not comprehensive) of needs by Marshall Rosenberg, professional peacemaker, from whose program I derive many of the ideas on this blog.

For needs to be met, they must be known.  The revealing of needs is called vulnerability.  "It's a gift when you reveal yourself nakely and honestly, at any given moment, for no other purpose than to reveal what's alive in you.  Just 'Here I am, and here is what I would like.'  This is my vulnerability at this moment." (1)  When we do this, our need can be met. 

We all have needs each day.  As these needs are met, connections form and grow with the one meeting them.  It feels good to have a need met, and it hurts to have an unmet need.  That's why they're called needs.  Because we are all connected through relation to God, we have needs only others can meet.  We also have a need to meet others' needs.  This is because we are all literally connected as family.   Since we share the same parts, it can rightly be said that part of me is in you, and part of you is in me.  Thus, "we can never really take care of ourselves without showing equal concern for the needs of others." (2)

Needs are the stimuli of our feelings.  A common mistake is to think that another person is responsible for my feelings.  But, while I may have a strong preference about who fills a particular need of mine, no specific type of need requires a specific person to fill it. 

We are our needs.  So, if someone completely fills my needs, they fill me.  They are in me, and if do the same for them, I am in them.  Two people who perfectly meet each others needs can be considered one as they completely fill each other.  There is no end to the building of bonds or meeting of needs.  There is no end to union.  

As our needs are met, including, and perhaps especially, to meet the needs of others, we fill the measure of our creation.  

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1. pg.146, Living Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg.
2. pg.138, Living Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg.

Life

To be or not to be is not the question.  We are (the one writing, and those reading this, exist).  To live or not to live; that is the question.  A creation can exist without living (see Biology 101). 1

Life is both the drive of needs as well as the actions pursuant to meeting those needs.  Needs move.  Needs mobilize to express and satisfy themselves.  Without the driving movement of our individual needs, we are not living.  We choose how to best fill our needs.  There are two plans for filling our needs, and we are always ever choosing one or the other.  How man mobilizes to express and get his needs met determines whether he will have life abundantly, or merely exist. 

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1 Well, my young friends, the biggest tragedy of life is not to live — not to function with your full soul, with your whole life, with enthusiasm, with spirit, with faith, with love. Lowell L. Bennion, “Overcoming Our Mistakes,” Tambuli, Jul 1981, 47  ~  "When death finds you, may it find you alive" - African proverb

The Plans of Happiness

There are two plans for our happiness.  There are only two plans.  We are always ever choosing one or the other. 1

Plan A

       Goals:  Meet as many needs as possible by
               Creating as many connections as possible thus
               Enhancing as much happiness as possible and
               Thinning the hurt as much as possible

  Strategies:  Preserving choice               
               Choosing to meet others' needs
               Allowing others to meet my needs
               Hoping for the best
               Waiting for the rest

               Faith in others fuels this plan and is the
               ultimate vulnerability

Plan B

       Goals:  Meet every need
               Creating perfectly whole connections to be
               Be happy all the time and
               Eliminate hurt entirely
      
  Strategies:  Removing choice
               Meeting others' needs and having my own needs
               met by forcible agreement of exchange
               Sacrificing autonomy and absorbing pain
               as investments in the Big Payoff

               Faith in self and the theory fuel this plan
               containing zero trust; requiring no vulnerability

infographic

The objective of Plan A is to have as much joy as possible, by completely connecting with as many people as possible, thus meeting as many of our needs as possible and reducing as much of our own hurt as possible.  We'll call the achievement of this state "Salvation".  The objective of Plan B is to meet everyone's needs all of the time and enjoy never-ending bliss by completely eliminating hurt.  We'll call the achievement of this state "Utopia". 

Both plans seek to meet needs, create connections, experience happiness, and reduce hurt.  They differ only in strategy. 2 

Meet Needs
'Needs are the resources that life requires to sustain itself.  For example, our physical existence depends on our needs for air, water, and food being fulfilled.'3  It feels good to have a need met, and it hurts to have an unmet need.  That's why they're called needs.  Because we are all connected through relation to God, some of our needs can only be met by others.  We need each other.  We are codependent through our shared matter. 

Plan A maintains autonomy as the need upon which all other needs rest - the cornerstone, mainstay, linchpin, or crux.  Indeed, they believe choice is their identity.  Therefore, they accept the hurt caused by others.  As a result, this plan contains lots of suffering, which endures as long as the choice of the one causing the hurt.  Because preserving choice is a chief tenet of this plan, it contains an element of "as good as it gets." 4 Adherents rely on persuasion of man's natural goodwill as an impetus for giving and receiving. 

Plan B seeks to eliminate hurt.  Choice is not considered to be a need.  Eliminating choice is a logical action for achieving the goal of eliminating hurt, when choice is not considered to be a need.  Plan B holds that a person's need can be met by another who is coerced.  Insofar as coercion succeeds, pleasure is had.  Adherents rely on force as an impetus for giving and receiving.  Force is applied by means of increasing pain or pleasure.  If others are hurt by the notion of eliminating choice, the hurt is deemed invalid, as choice is not considered a need.  The hurt caused by the application of force is accepted as an investment in Utopia.  They believe that true happiness can only be achieved when all people experience no suffering, including the suffering caused by others' choices.

Create Connections
Connections are bonds between lives which produce meaning and happiness.  They occur when needs are met.  I can connect physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. 

Plan A values connections which grow out of willful acts because willful acts include choice, through which trust is built.  Because persuasion is the tool, a large amount of patience is required during the trial and error process of learning to meet another's needs.  A person can tell us what they want, but we may not want to do it.  Or, we may want to help another, but he may not be in tune with his needs or have the ability or courage to vocalize them. 

Plan B also values connections for the happiness, or pleasure, they afford.  In this plan, it is generally understood that all connection will end, and so an appreciation for momentary pleasure is settled upon and highly lauded.  The lasting element of connection is not highly valued, less because adherents don't desire it, more because they find it mysteriously elusive, and mostly because they write-off the lack of lasting connection now as an investment in the future blissful, effortless, painless, and everlasting connections of Utopia.  "All is well that ends well."

Be Happy
Plan A derives happiness through making and keeping connections.  It feels good to have needs met.  Since adherents strive diligently to meet the needs of others, and get others to meet their needs, happiness abounds.  Plan A'ers are careful to distinguish between happiness that is likely to last, and happiness that isn't.  They look for that assurance that tells them if a strategy for meeting a need is sustainable.  Sustainable happiness is joy.  They seek only joy.

Plan B also derives happiness through making and keeping connections, or, having needs met.  Needs are met by agreement of exchange.  The agreement is enforced by force (what else?).  In this plan, the sustainability of a connection depends on how effective the agreement of exchange.  To establish an effective agreement of mutual meeting of needs, strong force must be applied.  Those who abide the agreement enjoy much pleasure, reaping the benefits of connection, while those who do not abide the agreement experience an increased application of force.

Hurt less
For Plan A, one of the best benefits of maintaining connections is that when someone hurts, others mourn with those who mourn  5.  Thus, the hurt is shared and the burden lightened.  It it accepted that the sadness of one will occasionally interrupt the reverie of another.  Thus, in Plan A, there is suffering  6.  The cost/benefit analysis of this aspect of maintaining connection is found in favor of the connection.  

The approach to hurt in Plan B is to accept the hurt which stems from disconnection, disregard of autonomy as a need, and the  application of force in order to ignite utopia.  Pleasure is the best medicine for coping with this abiding ache. 

Between the planners, there are disagreements about, and competition for, words.  Good and Evil are the most sought after and fought over words.  Happiness, Pain, Freedom, and Value are also heavily guarded words.  Here is how a few of these words are used in each plan:

Good
A: actions which connect and produce joy
B: actions which produce pleasure

Evil
A: actions which disconnect or do not produce joy
B: laws which circumscribe and their unwelcome consequences

Happiness
A: sustainable pleasure
B: pleasure

Suffering
A: allowing another to choose not to meet your need

B: not getting what you want

Freedom
A: possessing the ability to choose
B: abolishing negative consequences

Value
A: when a thing created is being used the way it was intended
B: desirability

Equality
A: understanding the worth of every contribution to existence and how they are connected
B: rewriting The Law to eliminate opposition, making it so that every choice produces the same, glorious consequence

At the end of the day, each team has fundamental disagreements about what is good, what is happiness, and what is pain.  Would that they could just agree to disagree.  Plan A'ers can agree to disagree, because their fundamental tenet is to preserve choice.  But, Plan B'ers do not value choice, and all means of achieving a painless state are justified.  Since a belief I hold can cause them pain, they must eliminate my belief.  So, the fundamental tenets of Plan B do not allow for them to agree to disagree. 7 8

Plan A lays out everything for people to see.  Knowing options is essential to making a choice.  Since Plan A promotes choice, it must necessarily promote options.  Plan B keeps a few cards close to the chest.  They do not believe that others, if given a choice, will meet all their needs.  Since choice is minimized, there is no motive for revealing all details of the plan. 

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1 1 Nephi 10:14 There are save two churches only
2 "I believe that human beings are always acting in the service of needs and values.  This is true whether the action does or does not meet the need, or whether it's one we end up celebrating or regretting."  Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication, pg. 133
3 Living Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg, p.3. 
4 "Agency is essential to the plan [A] of happiness.  This agency allows for all the pain and suffering we experience in mortality, even when caused by things we do not understand and the devastating evil choices of others." Quentin L. Cook, "Personal Peace: The Reward of Righteousness", General Conference, April 2013.
5 Mosiah 18:8-10
6 1 Corinthians 13:4
7 At the end of the movie "The Count of Monte Cristo", Edmond's former friend, Fernand, calls him out to duel.  Edmond's girl pleads, "Don't go."  But Edmond's wing-man tells Edmond, "You tried.  He'll never quit.  You must end this."  Because Plan Bers require the elimination of choice, and Plan Aers recognize that they are their choices, the first order of business for adherents of Plan A becomes self-preservation.
8 Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough - Isaiah 56:11

- God +

God can turn a negative into a positive.

The worst suffering experienced by a person on earth occurred when the Savior suffered the negative consequences of the human family's collective poor decisions in the Garden of Gethsemane, then again on the cross, followed a withdrawal of the greatest, most comforting gift afforded men on earth, His Heavenly Father's presence.  The greatest good came from His suffering and death.  By Christ's resurrection, we all will live after death.  By His atoning suffering, we all may be saved from the negative consequences of our poor decisions and experience joy now.

Likewise, God can turn all our rock bottoms into sacred ground.

He can do so as we do our part, which is all we can do.  After all we can do, Christ takes what’s left and uses it to make beautiful things which help us do more. Our body eats and drinks.  From our food and drink, our body takes energy.  When our bodies have done with the food and drink all that can be done, we poop.  All that is in the food that we cannot use, we leave behind.  God is nature.  Nature takes our poop and helps grow a fruit-bearing tree.  We then eat that fruit which gives us energy to do more.  God takes over after we do all we can do and converts what's left into our well-being.  This cycle is a temporal manifestation of the spiritual process and power of Grace.  God is an essential part of this equation - when we think we can do it all ourselves, we end up eating our own shit.

Whether bad experiences turned good were ‘God’s will’ or ‘meant to be’ eventually becomes a moot point.  No and Yes may both be correct at some point.  No and Yes are often, respectively, the start and the finish of a completed journey; for completed journeys, they are, in fact, the same point.  In the beginning, if our bad experience was sin, it wasn't God's orchestration; if, in the beginning, our bad experience was unprovoked suffering, it may or may not have been God’s orchestration.  However, the impetuses of all starting points which lead to the same ending are swallowed up in the benefits of that ending.  Indeed, when the end meets the beginning (if ever), then the original, negative meanings become converted into entirely different, positive and beautiful meanings.  The meaning of the end affects the meaning of the beginning as the beginning and end are joined in a completed circle, like a ring being welded.  If they are not joined, the meaning of the start remains negative.  It’s meaning does not become positive until God converts it in this fashion.
  

Our destination happens to be where we began our journey, though the journey is indispensable to our arrival there.  It was always our home.  But, something about us changes while we travel away, then around, and back again.

Judgement

There are two kinds of judgement - value and moralistic, or condemning. 

Value judgements are predictions based on observations.  Observation without judgement is the highest form of intelligence (1).  Value judgements are the only kind of judgements I suppose God to make.  Justice is the effect of the law.  The law is an if / then sequence.  Justice can be thought of as a very sharp knife.  The knife, and the way it cuts, is inculpable.  That which is cut bears responsibility for the way which it lands on the knife.  The law exists outside of God.  God is bound by the law.  Because this is the case, God has no motive for issuing moralistic judgements surrounding the law. (2)

Because God is höchst intelligent, and He's lived a very, very, very long time, He's made some keen observations.  He knows both sides of the coin.  He sees the end from the beginning.  He knows where our choices lead.  I believe God only uses moralistic language insofar as it is helpful to humanity.  "These commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding." 

Moralistic, or condemning judgments, are, perhaps, however, a necessary part of our development.  Because faith is required until we learn - until we have seen enough and experienced enough to make predictions or value judgments; until we have lived long enough as a collective or as an individual to learn the value of a thing - we need moralistic judgments as guidance.  Seeing moralistic judgments in this way allows me to not condemn them as bad, but rather as lacking interpretation.

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1 An observation is to note specific action.  In heaven, God observes that there is rejoicing, gladness, light, and unity.  In hell, God observes that there is weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.  This is an observation free of moralistic judgment.  
2 John 8:15,16 Jesus doesn't judge, but, if He did, it would be just.  Why? Because he perfectly lives the law.

Justice

Justice is the effect of the law.  The law is an if / then sequence.  There are no moralistic judgements in the law.  It does not condemn or label or shame.  It is blind.  A wise person, however, can make value judgements through careful, continual observation of the law. 

Justice can be thought of as a very sharp knife.  The knife, and the way it cuts, is inculpable.  That which is cut bears responsibility for the way which it falls on the knife.  The law exists outside of God.  God is bound by the law.  Because this is the case, God has no motive for issuing moralistic judgements surrounding the law.  "There is a law given, and a punishment affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God" (italics, underline, and bold added).  All God does is watch and warn, then weep or rejoice.

The law is comprised of two parts, if and then.  The "if" encapsulates choice, or the agency of man over which the Eternal War is fought.  The "then" encapsulates consequence.  Our Adversary seeks to do away with both choice and consequence by compelling others to meet needs and by obtaining fruit without works.  An example of a law he fights against is the law of the harvest, which states that you reap what you  sew.  Common practice to his theology stipulates that all are forced to work, and all will reap equally (this includes taking from those who work more and giving to those who work less).  In theory, forcing everyone to work may seem like a good idea, but in practice, removing people's choice is like withholding the leaven from bread.  Non-autonomous people will not rise, except in rebellion.

Vulnerability

**UNDER CONSTRUCTION**

God is like the sun - a raw, exposed, life giving ball of energy.  He is vulnerable.  He does protect Himself, but not the way we tend to.