Real Connections with Others Take Real Effort (Part 3 in the "Normal Is Moving" Series)

NEW! Now you can listen to the author reading this essay HERE: Listen to the Scrawling Shepherd read this essay


I've mentioned this before to those who know me, or who have read other things I've written: I am in introvert by nature. Talking to "strangers", to new people I'm just meeting, or even to acquaintances does not come easy to me. I do it, because I know that it's important. It is just always an effort to me to do it. I comes with a cost. I have to spend emotional capital, resources, to engage in conversation.

For me, this is especially true with "chit-chat," with "small talk", with conversation just about anything at all. Filler. That's how I see it. Something to fill the silences, the pauses. Some people seem to need it, or at least, to want it. Not me. I'm comfortable with silence. It's a part of who I am, my personality.  Carrying on this kind of conversation, for me, does not come naturally or easily. I can do it, but it is often awkward and feels, at least to me, like maybe I'm "trying too hard." I really don't know if the other person notices my discomfort or feels my awkwardness. If so, they don't say anything about it. Maybe they just politely continue on, while thinking "what's wrong with this poor guy? Is he daft?"

Well, enough about that. Here's the point I'm trying to build up to: really connecting with others requires real effort. Right now, almost EVERY interaction I have with ANYBODY and EVERYBODY is taking place in a telephone call, an email, a text message, or especially, a Zoom videoconference call or meeting. I'll talk about the Zoom meeting in particular. The Zoom call is planned, scheduled, arranged, set up, hosted. It can be recorded. There are steps to take to set up a call. There are steps to be taken to accept an invitation to join a call. There is protocol to follow while in (on?) the call. For most of us this is quite new. I know that Skype and Facetime and some others have been around for awhile now, but I've never been much of a fan of them. Doesn't matter. Right now, this is how we are connecting with one another.

As a teacher, I'm using Google Hangouts Meet, which is yet another video conferencing "app". We're using Meet because it's part of the Google Suite of software applications our school is using for creating, storing, sharing, and distributing data and content relating our our educational objectives. (That sounds like propaganda as I read it back. It is, unfortunately, exactly the way my mind sees it. Poor me.) I (and my colleagues with me) are using this application to conduct live teaching sessions engaging with our students "face to face" in real time. They see and hear me, along with whatever content on my computer that I choose to share with them. I see and hear them (although it's amusing to me how many of my students want to leave their cameras and microphones turned off. Turns out that at least one student uses that ploy to sign into class on his computer and then walk away. But that's a matter for a different forum entirely.)

Using video conferencing to teach, or to conduct a board meeting, a church leaders meeting, a home group Bible study meeting are all things I've done with frequency in the last two weeks. You're probably familiar with what I'm talking about, and perhaps you're using these tools even more often than I do. They all require some degree of intentional effort to make the connection happen. That brings me, finally, to the point of this post. I've been giving some deliberate thought to the way I connect with people. (Reference my previous post in the series called "Closing the Distance" --click on that title to follow the link to the article.)

Making and maintaining relationships with others requires deliberate effort on your part. Sometimes the effort seems light, and the joy you find in the relationship makes you overlook, or even forget, that you're spending effort to participate in that relationship. My marriage to Kelly is a great example. Unlike me, Kelly is extroverted by nature. She wants to connect and engage with people; she craves it, and she's very, very good at it. To me as an observer, it seems effortless to her. I sometimes watch ice skating on television. The really, really accomplished skaters make it look so easy, so natural, to graceful, so effortless. And then I remember me on ice skates on a frozen lake, or most recently, an indoor ice arena. That is how I imagine the relative ease of making and maintaining relationships for a person like Kelly as compared to the same tasks for a person like me.

The bottom line in this, for me, is the "want to." I am aware now, more than ever, that connecting with people requires deliberate effort. And I can do it, if I really want to. And right now, I do. (Really want to, that is.)

Normal Is Moving. And I'm coming with it, whatever it is, and wherever it ends up. See you there!


(Personal note to "Unknown." If you are not "Unknown" please stop reading now. Thanks.
Dear Unknown:

Thanks for your encouraging comments on some of the blog articles you've read. I appreciate you wanting to keep your name private and unpublished. I respect that. Just between you and me, though, I'm curious about your identity. I am uncertain if you are someone I know personally, a family member or friend, or someone I know casually or professionally, or possibly someone I've never met in person. If you're willing to let me know, privately, who you are, I would very much appreciate it, and I promise not to reveal your true identity to the others who might read my blog. I believe that there is a way to contact me directly somewhere in this blog, but if you can't find it, post in an anonymous comment how to reach you, or tell me to need to know how to reach me. Thanks so much!

And if you are not "Unknown" and you are still reading this: not cool, man.

Closing the Distance (Part 2 in the Normal Is Moving series)

NEW! Now you can LISTEN to the author reading this essay HERE: The Scrawling Shepherd reads this essay



A few days ago I wrote an article I called Normal Is Moving. If you missed it, you can find it HERE.

In that article I mentioned some ideas I have about how I want to describe, define, and develop its new location for me. Today I'm writing about the first of those ideas.

I also mentioned recently that my mind has been working hard while the rest of me is resting. Many mornings I've woken with a spaghetti pile of thoughts tumbling around like sneakers in a clothes dryer. This morning, the thread of one of those ideas was sticking out a little more prominently, where I could get hold of it and coax it loose.

We're in Week #3 (depending on when you start counting) of what we've been calling "social distancing." It's a new expression, socially engineered to be less alarming and confrontational than the old words: isolation and quarantine. But that's okay, I'm not objecting to the semantics. Words are important. That's not my point.

My thought was this: since I'm overcoming the isolation of social distancing using digital technology readily available to most of us at very little expense (besides the expense of internet access we were already paying anyway!), that means of connection has actually SHORTENED or CLOSED the distance between people who are separated by hundreds of miles of actual, real world distance.

Kelly (my wife in case you don't know me personally) and I have some very dear friends who live in Northern Maine. During the three years we lived there, we made many friendships that were and are dear to us. Since our return visits to that region are very few and very far between, it has been difficult to maintain those relationships.

Here's where I need to confess a character flaw or shortcoming that I have long known was true of me: I'm really lousy at maintaining relationships over time and distance. It's partly due to my introverted nature, but I was reminded by my pastor on Sunday that "It's just the way I am" is not an acceptable excuse for not doing the things that I should do, or becoming the person God wants me to be, and others close to me want me to become.

So, it's been my "custom" to allow the relationships I've made during a certain season in my life to wither due to neglect after I've moved on geographically, or professionally, or both. That's "my bad." (Another way of acknowledging that it's my fault without actually doing anything to change it.)

I started noticing more than a decade ago that now that we have these new platforms that eventually became known collectively as "social media," I could find and reconnect with some of those people. It started with "MySpace." Remember that one? It showed up a little earlier than Facebook, but like Compuserve, was quickly swallowed up by Facebook, and Twitter, and then Instagram, Snapchat, and whatever else is already in use.

I found and reconnected with some high school classmates, and one connection in particular gave me an opportunity to try to apologize for the poor treatment and neglect I had shown to one of those classmates. Some of you who know me well and/or have heard me talk for long enough might remember that story. I won't retell it here.

Soon, I moved over to Facebook, the social media megaladon, where I've found and reconnected with many, many other people I've known over the years: high school, college, military service, seminary (1st), seminary (2nd), and the churches and schools where I've served, as well as the secular jobs I've held over the years. All of these relationships I rediscovered were important to me AT THE TIME, but every one of them had been left to wither, starved of attention.

But all of that is changing, starting NOW. My thought this morning was that social distancing, while impacting by current relationships and style of work, has closed the distance that existed between those former and neglected relationships.

Friday night our "Home Group", the small group Kelly and I are a part of at our church, met via Zoom conferencing. (Side note: man, I wish I had the money and intelligence to buy some shares of Zoom a month ago!) We sat "together", each in our own place of isolation and distancing, but connected virtually by digital communication tools. A camera, a microphone, sound speakers, a computer to drive them and an internet connection (wireless!) facilitated our meeting. It wasn't "the same" as being in the same room. (Mostly because we couldn't share a potluck meal together!) Okay, there are other things true of meeting over distance that fall short of being in person, but since that isn't possible, this seems like the "next best thing." Some of the people in our group actually live quite close to us, geographically. We could walk to their house if we wanted to, but right now that's out of the question.

Back to my thought from this morning. If I can continue to teach my students while at home staring at a computer screen and speaking into a microphone, and if I can attend a board meeting, or a staff meeting, or an elders meeting, by Zoom, and have a satisfactory experience of seeing and hearing what others are saying, why not use the same means of connection with my friends who live hundreds of miles away?

The social distance between us is a current and temporary necessity. But in some way, the distance between those of us who are nearby and those of us who are far away is, right now, exactly the same distance.

Normal is moving. But I see a chance to go forward from where it used to be to a new, and in many ways better, situation. Get ready, friends far and wide! I may be sending you an invitation to a Zoom meeting soon!

God's blessing and peace be upon you.

Dennis

NORMAL IS MOVING. (Part 1 in a Series)

NEW! NOW you can LISTEN to the author read this essay HERE: The Scrawling Shepherd reads "Normal Is Moving"


#NormalIsMoving. #NormalIsOnTheMove. Normal doesn't live here any more. It won't be back. I'm not really worrying about it, though. I'll find it when it settles in at its new address. Don't know where it will be or what it will look like yet. But I'll catch up to it, sure enough.

It's for the best, really. The only thing Normal's old look had going for it was, well, its familiarity. I knew right where to find it. It had really settled in. It was comfortable. Because of that, it was reassuring to me. On reflection, though (because suddenly I find myself with the time to reflect, to think. I had been putting this off, because it is so much easier not to do this. Easier to kick it down the street; to put it off until a time when I might be able to think about things without being annoyed.) Normal really hasn't done that much for me. Just kept me right where I was.

Rats. No more excuses, no more reasons not to think about things. It's time I really started looking at how really messy Normal had made things. Normal is the enemy of progress; the adversary of growth, the antagonist of change. I'd go on, but I left my thesaurus in my actual office/classroom, and in my home office/classroom/broadcasting studio, I don't have room for it.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty excited to imagine the possibilities of Normal's new place. In fact, I've got some ideas I'm going to suggest. For now, though, I'll keep them to myself. I don't want to spoil your joy at being able to have some input into what your new Normal is going to look like.

I just know this. I won't find Normal in the usual place any more. And now that I'm coming to realize that, I think I'll be okay. Maybe I'll be a little more reluctant to let Normal get so comfortable in its next location. #NormalIsATraveler.