“How did you get to be so kind, generous, compassionate, empathetic, self-aware, thoughtful, and creative?”

I asked this of someone I admire recently, and then considered all the other people I know and admire to whom I’d ask the same thing. Knowing what I know about their lives, here is my story.

We emit and express these qualities from at least two origins:

First, we have felt them from other people. We were open to and received kindness, compassion, empathy, thoughtfulness–love, basically–from fellow humans. It was role modeled to us. Second, we experienced challenges, struggles, and pain that taught us the value and importance of having this love in our lives. As I think more, these experiences–feeling loved and supported in times of crisis and pain–integrate to make us stronger and more resilient, more grounded in ourselves and open to relationship with others. This is the essence of Healing Through Connection.

Consider the folks you know who exude these qualities. I bet you could easily describe them as Strong and Soft, vulnerable and courageous, with a depth, mass, and volume that can hold space and tolerance for a wide and divergent field of ideas and experiences, even and especially conflicting and paradoxical ones. They are the ones we seek when we long to feel this wideness, this grace.

Then I think about how the opposite happens: When in times of existential crisis and pain we feel isolated, unperceiving of love and support. Just thinking about it evokes a deep sadness, an instant recognition of profound loneliness that seeks immediate relief. What is this dynamic? How does it happen that someone faces pain and struggle truly alone and devoid of kindness, empathy, compassion, and grace–of any connection–shown to them? I know it happens, and I am likely guilty of ignoring or simply being oblivious to other’s struggles as I go about my own busy life.

So when I come across someone who exudes the opposite of kindness, empathy, compassion, generosity, openness, and grace, what story do I tell about that? How does my story, told subconsciously and automatically, then affect and even dictate how I show up to that person? How might I modify and optimize my default story to then raise the likelihood that I will interact with this person in a way that connects and heals?

We’re living in tumultuous and fraught times, friends. The stories we tell about one another, the presence or absence of love in our daily encounters, matter more now than ever. Look around you for the role models. See how they move through life with ease and joy, resilience and hope, optimism despite everything. Observe them, query them, emulate them. Feel the rewards of connection with them, and amplify that.

It’s never too late, and no action is ever too little, to Heal Through Connection.