The Importance of Connection
My entire life I have felt a deep and powerful connection to nature. I have always felt most myself under the trees with the sun shining on my face. I have always been empowered by ocean waves, bright shining stars, and the beauty of biodiversity in symbiosis with each other. So here I sit with a passion so strong to encourage, share, and show respect for our planet and everyone and everything that lives here.
As a recent college graduate, I have been dwelling in the fact that I can do absolutely anything with my life. How terrifying! How exciting! My life is an open book of blank pages waiting to be filled with glorious adventure and endeavors. However, as I enter this stage of my life, I seek answers to discover how you can be truly fulfilled in this life. Lately I have been contemplating the idea of connection and how this concept enhances our lives. There are three major forms of connection that I have found to be life altering when it comes to getting the most out of this crazy, undeserving, and incredible experience of living. These are connection to self, connection to others, and connection to nature. Throughout my twenty-three revolutions around the sun, I have seen how important each of these forms of connection are and how much value can be added to your life by implementing these into your daily practices.
Everyone has their own unique purpose and goals for living. While embracing the uniqueness of your own experience, I believe that the incorporation of connection is universal to harboring joy. Connection to yourself, while somewhat cliche, is extremely important to cultivating gratitude. If you don’t understand yourself, your needs, your desires, the moments that give you butterflies and goosebumps, you may never find satisfaction. Only you can know the desires of your heart, mind, and soul, and we need to be respectful to ourselves and our boundaries. Focusing on ourselves has been downplayed out of fear of coming off as egocentric or arrogant. But it’s true what they say: you have to fill your own cup before you can pour into others. By setting aside time or simply by paying more attention to how you are feeling in the moments of your life, you can look inside yourself and find what brings you the most joy. I also find it beneficial to write gratitude lists and meditate to feel most connected to myself and bring joy to my personal experience.
The next kind of connection I find absolutely essential to life itself is connection to others. Humankind was built to rely on community. It is impossible to live a happy life in complete solitude. The human spirit was not created to be isolated, that’s what drives people to insanity. We are a very social species. So, regardless if you are an introvert or an extrovert, connection to others is non-negotiable. Community fuels inspiration, communication, support, and belonging. All of which, I believe, are key to a fulfilling experience on this planet. I have found the most joy being surrounded by my community of incredible and inspiring people and can truly say that they have been some of the greatest contributions to my happiness (shoutout to the homies).
The last of the types of connection I find incredibly important to actually living rather than just surviving is connection to nature. I feel as though this type of connection comes more naturally to some and others might need to work on finding this deep instinctive connection. I think society has made it so easy to become un-reliant on having a deep relationship to nature. Everything these days is so accessible. However, humans were not meant to live separate from nature. We are a part of the beautiful and utterly unique universe. Having a connection to the natural world brings in so many new perspectives and endless gratitude for the life we’re given. The more we can dive into nature, the more respect we can cultivate, and the more we find reason to care. One of my favorite quotes is one by Gus Speth, an environmental lawyer, which says:
“I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy...and to deal with those, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
This quote beautifully exhibits the main environmental problem we face today to be a lack of connection. When we can find relations to the wind, the trees, the birds, the insects, and all other species to ourselves, we realize that protecting the environment is protecting ourselves. Our roots, our intelligence, our species.
Throughout my years on this planet, I have seen connection become fuel for the fire in our lives. So whatever your story, whatever your purpose, I encourage you to find connection in every way you can, and watch your life become an even more beautiful story.
With love,