The late months of 2013 saw me challenge my young 14 year old sister to a duel to who can read the most books leading into Christmas. Even though I horribly lost to a 14 year old, and was rather ashamed of my reading speed since I’m 10 years older, I did discover some interesting ideas that I wish to share with everyone.

Out of all the beautiful texts out there in the world, reading about the human condition, how humans work, live, function and go about their lives interests me the most. I don’t know what it is that I find so interesting about human beings but I must say that we are absolutely fascinating creatures. Truly, if we get visited by some of our inter-galactic friends, we would be considered an odd bunch of sentient beings. Can you imagine another being from another part of this universe observing us? What questions would she (he?) ask?

• What are these people doing?
• Why do they all lie down in a dark room every day at the same time and stand back up at the same time?
• Where are they going? I don’t understand why they are all in such a rush?

Although it can be rather humorous to imagine what an alien might think of us if he peeked into our lives, I feel that the way most people go about their daily chores - if some did decide to have a look at us - it would seem like, as Joe Rogan puts it, a complete psychedelic trip.

That was a complete tangent to what I actually wanted to share which is more to do with this idea that I have been mulling in my mind of human connection and why we struggle to connect with others. One of the few books I actually did finish in the race with my sister is Brene Browns “Daring Greatly” which was a fantastic read on the human ability or disability, I should say, to connect with other human beings.

Now, really quickly, I want shoot into a short tangent and say that when you read as many books as I do (which is not that many compared to my little sister) on the similar topics you start noticing patterns and ideas that match. Now I’m not saying that some of these authors are plagiarizing. In fact I want to mention how amazing it is too see multiple authors speak of similar ideas through their own research as this narrows down the true concepts for us less intellectually gifted.

The reason I bought that up was because of out of the four books I read below —

• The art of happiness by H.H. Dalai Lama
• Stumbling on happiness by Daniel Gilbert
• The righteous mind by Jonathan Haidt
• Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Among these four authors, and their respective research, there was a common theme stating that a human beings’ greatest desire, if it could be dialed down to one thing, is to connect and belong. I’ll say that one more time since your probably skimming this post. One of the greatest human desires, if it could be dialed down to one, is to connect and belong. Now I find that absolutely fascinating, partially due to observing myself and others around me and realizing how innate this desire is to us being humans. The other more negative observation I have made is that the way we live our daily lives undermines and hinders our chances of fulfilling this desire.

When we are born onto this earth and as we grow up, one could say that we have “two seeds that need developing”. As Dalai Lama puts it, one seed is of compassion, empathy and kindness. This seed longs for connection, belonging and a higher purpose. We as humans being, even the most individualistic among us, search for that football team, that group of students that get together to study every Thursday, church. The other seed is of more selfish desires inherent to being different to others, unique in a way. One of the similar ideas Jonathan Haidt presents in his book “the righteous mind” is of humans being selfish yet “groupish”. Haidt suggests that we do have both of these desires, one to belong to something bigger than us and the other to be more unique.

So who are we really? Is it really a duel between an egalitarian right Vs a narcissistic left? Who wins?

Well it truly doesn't matter who wins because in the end we suffer anyway. The way we live our lives fueling that selfish part of us, needing to be different to others because we feel if we don’t we will lose the “invisible race” of the “status quo”. Our need to be unique collides with our desire to connect as we ourselves are to blame for inability to form relationships, friendships and bond with others. As Brene Brown points our in her book, human connection is built around the ability to empathise and relate to others. It’s very difficult to relate to unique people.

Our very need to belong and connect with other human beings relies on our ability to identify similarities, relate to each other and understand our struggles. If we cannot empathise with our fellow earthians then we cannot connect. Sadly, the only thing stopping us is us.