Edward M. Hallowell - Connect: 12 Vital Ties that Open your Heart, Lengthen your Life, and Deepen your Soul

ALSO BY EDWARD M. HALLOWELL, M.D .

Worry: Controlling It and Using It Wisely

When You Worry About the Child You Love:
Emotional and Learning Problems in Children

What Are You Worth? (with William Grace)

Finding the Heart of the Child:
Essays on Children, Families, and Schools

(with Michael Thompson, Ph.D.)

Driven to Distraction (with John J. Ratey, M.D.)

Answers to Distraction (with John J. Ratey, M.D.)

Copyright 1999 by Edward M. Hallowell, M.D.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hallowell, Edward M.
Connect / Edward M. Hallowell.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-83377-8
1. Quality of life. 2. Interpersonal relations. 3. Achievement motivation.
4. Performance. I. Title.
BF637.C5H295 1999
158.2dc21 9913082
CIP

Random House Web Address: www.randomhouse.com

v3.1

To my mother and father

and

to the many people who offered their

personal stories for this book

Only connect
E. M. FORSTER
Howards End

Think where mans glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends.
W. B. YEATS

Mutual empathy is the great unsung human gift.
JEAN BAKER MILLER, M.D. , and IRENE PIERCE STIVER, PH.D. ,
The Healing Connection

With somebody to love, even the most severely afflicted can make it.
KEN DUCKWORTH, M.D .

CONTENTS

I ALMOST DIDN T make it, a man said to me. I dont know how I survived. He had just weathered bankruptcy and major surgery, both in the same year.

How did you make it? I asked.

He thought for a moment, then replied, It was other people. My friends, my family, and thinking about what my dad would have done. Thats what saved me.

I hear comments like this in my professional practice and in my private life every day. The connections we make are what pull us through the hard times and give meaning to the good.

Simply put, we need one another. We need connections that matter, connections that are heartfelt. We need to connector reconnectto our friends, our families, our neighbors, our communities. We also need to connector reconnectto our pasts, our traditions, and our ideals.

The way this can be done most naturally is in person through what I call the human moment. A human moment occurs anytime two or more people are together, paying attention to one another.

These connections are the key to what counts in life, from a happy family to a successful business to a sense of inner peace, even to physical health and longevity. But these interpersonal bridges are breaking down. Just as our highway system needs repair, the interpersonal infrastructure of America is weakening. Were losing human contact with one another, even though we dont mean to. Were busy. Were otherwise engaged. Were somewhere else.

More and more of us ache inside, yearning to connect but wondering how to. If you feel this way, dont feel alone. You are in the company of millions.

It is time for us to find one another once again. It is time to reconnect in this busy, disconnected world.

For most people, the two most powerful experiences in life are achieving and connecting. Almost everything that counts is directed toward one of these two goals. The peaks of life for most people are falling in love (connecting) and reaching a hard-won goal (achieving).

While we are doing well at achieving, were not doing well at connecting. This book is about connecting, especially connecting with other people, live, in the human moment.

There are many kinds of connections people make. You can connect with your family, your friends, your pets; you can connect with your neighborhood, your political party, your baseball team; you can connect with your job, your garden, a part of the city you love, a favorite piece of music; you can connect with nature, the house you used to live in, your past; and you can connect with whatever is beyond knowledgewith the transcendent, with whatever you call God.

Strong connections make life feel satisfying and secure. But many of us have started to neglect the life of connection, giving most of our time to achievement and daily chores. This is a dangerous trend. It is time to make connecting a top priority again, because both our health and our happiness depend upon it.

Maybe you feel powerless; you think disconnection is a sign of the times. Life has grown too busy, you say, and you have all you can do just to stay afloat. Maybe you feel you dont have much control. But you have more control than you may think. Let me give an example of one womans grassroots attempt to deal with the problem of weakening connections.

Christine Mitchell was upset because the people in her neighborhood didnt talk to one another. She lived in a perfectly pleasant suburb of Boston. The problem was that most people came home each day, closed their doors, got up the next day, went to work, then came home and closed their doors again. Few people knew one another. Now and then someone would walk outside to see what the siren and flashing lights were all about if an ambulance went by, and once in a while Christine would see two people actually standing on the sidewalk conversing. But that was rare.

Many people around the country are in such a situation. Most of us feel we are too busy to do anything about it, or we feel powerless or simply shy. Christine, however, decided to take action in her own small way. She went down to city hall and for ten dollars bought a booklet that listed all the phone numbers in her town by street address, followed by the name of the person who lived there. She then wrote a list of all the people who lived in her neighborhood. Eight hundred names.

Ill bring these people together, face-to-face, she said to herself. Ill set it up so theyll have to talk to one another. Her idea was simple. She decided to organize a neighborhood block party, inviting all the people on her list of eight hundred.

She had never organized a big event before, but she pushed ahead anyway, with her husbands enthusiastic encouragement. Lets bring these people out of hiding! he said to her.

If this is a flop, I dont know what Ill do, she said back to him.

It wont be a flop, he said.

How does he know? Christine thought to herself, but she went on with it anyway.

Many people said theyd come, but Christine was still worried. Weve all seen people act enthusiastic about showing up somewhere, then opt out at the last minute for a million different reasons. It has become the modern style! Say