The Social NetWorker

Remembering to Connect

(This is a guest post by Megan Elizabeth Morris.)

Last Monday afternoon I came rolling back into town with my car full of camping gear -- and trash bags, and random disorganized bits and pieces that had managed to escape my perfect packing over the course of five days. The cooler was somehow still full of food, because when everyone brings extra to share, everyone ends up taking that much more home with them. (This worked out well for us because I had another chunk of traveling to do this last weekend, and we made great use of the food in that cooler!) I'd managed to sunburn the tops of my feet (I have to put sunblock there, too?) and I was tired from tearing down camp under the midday Texas sun, but I was happy. Mostly because I'd just spent a week with some of the most fascinating people I know.

I came home surer than ever that connecting with one another is essential to our ability to get things done, and even more than that -- that it's not just about getting things done. It's about being able to live with ourselves, too. Part of what makes life amazing is the way it connects together, the way it interacts, cooperates, creates support structures. We get tricked out of doing that, sometimes, by becoming convinced that other people are cold, or cruel, or uncaring. That they don't have depth and emotion to match our own, or that they possess some other trait that makes them inaccessible -- when in fact they, too, are coping with their lives the best they can, they have things that make them happy and sad, things that pain them, things that make them cry and smile and laugh and cry out in frustration.

We don't show these things to the rest of the world, a lot of the time, but it's all still there. And one of the few groups of people that seem fundamentally equipped to help us remember this would be social workers. Anyone who was picked on in grade school knows what it's like to forget that we're all People and we all have Stuff. The ability to connect with those we feel removed from is powerful. It breaks down walls, and yes, it makes good things happen.

Who can you really connect with, today?

And who can you remind to really connect with someone else?

Megan Elizabeth Morris (email)
Ms. Morris writes at Personal Revelations of the Magnificent Megan M. Megan Elizabeth Morris, or The Magnificent Megan M., [proper noun]: Superhuman font of knowledge, skill, determination & resourcefulness. Exudes enzymes that cause others to surpass their potential. Master thinker; writes, designs, manages, ideastorms, markets, inspires, connects, grows, teaches, makes things happen, changes the world, and throws a mean right hook. (Okay. Not the last one. Well! Not literally.)