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
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"
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"
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