I’ve been thinking about this topic for about three or four days now. There are a number of reasons / events - and one very specific - that have caused it to come front of mind, but mainly it is because in my current state of “vacation”.
Let me first clarify what I mean by “connection” – or rather what I don’t mean. I don’t mean “can you use your connections to get me tickets”. What I do mean, is those tangible and intangible things which connect us to people.
As I rode through the hills and valleys from Nafpaktos down to Kalamata to visit friends I kept reflecting on what are the things that connect us to people, how do they differ, and what are the factors that change or affect them.
My first thought was that there are basically two kinds of connection we form with people. I’m going to call them “institutional” and “random”.
Institutional connections with people arise primarily from institutions - funny that! – and include family, school, university, work, social circle etc.
These institutions have rules, codes, contexts and histories. We build our connection with people from these institutions based primarily on the platforms provided. Our first friends our typically the children of our parent’s friends. Then we move on to making connections with other children at nursery school and throughout our childhood through schools and our local community activities (e.g. scouts, swimming club, etc.). Sometimes these friends overlap across institutions – i.e. you go to school with kids who you know from being your parent’s friends children.
A similar thing happens as one goes to high school and university – but of course as our number of institutions expands, so does our circle of connections and the contexts from which they have grown.
Then we start work and meet new people through work and build more institutional circles, some with overlaps and some not.
We’ve all been in the situation where two separate circles of friends meet – say work friends and university friends – and the occasional awkwardness that this can sometimes produce as they know you – or connect to you - from very different perspectives.
Our best connections have usually evolved over years and transcend this kind of contextual demarcation - mainly because the friendship is truly deep and thus does not rely on the props of a shared experience or the “in-joke” or specific contexts of institutional connections.
But the other kind of connection is the one that has really interested me in the last few days. The “Random” connection. The connection that has no real context or if it does, it is based on a very tiny context in comparison to the “institutional” connection.
And it is the nature of the “random” connection that is interesting. Precisely what is it that connects us to people we don’t know and have no context for knowing?
Is it vibe? An intangible aesthetic? An idea? A notion? A hope? An unconscious need?
I have truly struggled to define this as I have thought about it. The closest I have come so far is a mix of values and interests which at some point converge to form a transmission of some kind – like a radio signal – which can be picked up very quickly by people with an equal or receptive capacity for those same values and interests. It is a momentary thing – instant.
We have all shared a knowing look with a stranger in a bar or at a bus station. Where we both know that we are thinking the same thing. The difference is with the random connection is that instead of then forgetting the person at the bar or in the bus station, we instead find ourselves drawn to them and we connect somehow.
Some of the most interesting, stimulating and important people that I have “connected” with in the last ten years have been totally random connections. There has been no rhyme or reason as to why I should have ever met them other than a freak moment of chance that brought us in contact, allowed a single transmission of a V&I signal and resulted in us becoming connected.
There is another dimension that complicates (or enriches depending on your perspective) - gender. When we talk about connections to people of the opposite sex, there is - at least in my experience – the third dimension of attraction. Attraction beyond the “Values” and “Interests”. That impossible to describe aspect of encountering someone of different gender and understanding immediately an attraction or not, without being able to meaningfully define it. So Values & Interests & Attraction. VIA.
I find random connections incredibly vital as each that I can recall has massively expanded my life compared to the incremental enrichment I get from connecting with people from more institutional contexts. Of course, random connections can become institutionalized – they become part of a circle somehow, even if the circle is just one person, or they become colleagues, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands or a man you see at the bar sometimes.
A good example is my friend Jon - the drummer in my last band. Jon was a guy I met randomly at a party when we played together in an improvised jam session – me on guitar and vocals, him on the drums. We had fun playing music together and so exchanged numbers and then had no contact for four years.
One random day – four years later - I rang him up to see if he was still in the country. He was. I asked if he fancied putting a blues band together. He did. We put the band together and became great friends. The band became an institution of course, and our connection ultimately transferred to that context – but before it became institutionalized it was a great new connection that gave me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction.
Random connections – because they do not rely on props or contexts – are typically very honest and vital in my experience. They are exciting – because of their novelty and because of their unpredictability – but also because of their freedom.
Of course this cannot and does not last . . . once a random connection begins to institutionalize it begins to adopt rules and codes – self determined or established - and then it becomes more predictable. A friendship demands certain attentions, behaviours and actions, a romantic relationship others and so on. But in the beginning, the unknown is tremendously exciting – particularly as one considers possibilities and their probabilities . . .
To qualify as a random connection, as opposed to just a new institutional connection, I think there must be as little in common as possible between the two people other than the thing that initially connects them. That could be an event (an earthquake or other kind of disaster) or a shared interest (a concert of a favourite musician, a book signing etc.) or even more random acts such as bumping into someone in a museum or at a bus stop and starting a conversation.
My favourite “random” people in my life are from different countries, different cultures, different mother tongues, different backgrounds, different religions, different ages etc - and it’s perhaps this diversity which I find both interesting and enriching – particularly as somewhere in all of that we have something in common which we discovered quickly and which connected us.
I also think that there are two kinds of approach that people have to this phenomenon (if indeed it is recognized or understood by anyone other than me!) . . .
Those who find great comfort in their institutions and therefore in their institutional connections, and those who accept their institutions for what they are – and the connections within them – but for whom the random connections are essential.
In other words there are people who shy away from or avoid random connections and those who seek them out.
In terms of what draws people to the “random team” I think it’s partly a function of curiosity (certainly in my case) and partly a function of looking for other energy outside of the normal framework of reference.
Those who prefer the safety and structure of institutionalized connections do not like the anxiety or uncertainty of a random connection, nor the “risk” implied in it. For there is risk when you put yourself out there with a stranger of any kind – a quid pro quo of course in terms of exposure and vulnerability, but nevertheless, you have to be prepared to take the risk…and be curious.
While my oldest and best friend is someone who I went to school with and have been close to ever since, many of my other great friendships / associations / relationships, began as “random” connections – and certainly the people who are most important to me and influential in my life today began as “randoms” – in other words they had no reason to cross my path or me theirs at all, but their VI or VIA was so strong, we connected and usually right away.
In terms of the kinds of connections one forms with random people, the connection can be narrow or broad. With institutional connections there is usually a much more specific band defined usually by the context in which the connection was formed. For example, a work colleague is the kind of connection which ranges from acquaintance to friend while a random connection could just be someone who really digs your favourite hobby and you connect on that – or they could end up being your husband or wife.
Indeed, my ex-wife (or the “First Wife” as I optimistically like to refer to her . . .) was a “random” – we had almost no context at all. Ironically we created two institutions – marriage and then divorce - and thus we have the context that we created together and then later abandoned together. Now we remain good institutional friends.
Another feature of random connections in my experience is the rapidity – and indeed intensity - with which the connection forms – usually a matter of days, but sometimes even hours or minutes – while institutional connections, again because of their context, tend to develop over a longer period.
This may explain the concept of “love at first sight” to some degree – although not all random connections are built on love as a premise, and usually only those that involve the A factor in the VI equation.
And of course, “love at first sight” goes one of two ways. It stays random briefly before it dies or eventually it becomes institutionalized!
By definition, random connections cannot be chosen or sought. They happen. This is – for me at least – part of the excitement of them. Moreover, I don’t think people can choose to be a person who is attracted to the random connection or the institutional connection. I think we all experience both, but some of us prefer and get more energy from random connections and some prefer and get more energy from the comfort of institutional connections.
Again, it is about appetite for risk, preparedness for vulnerability, and ability to accept change, novelty and the unknown. . .
Life is bigger than Facebook and fellow alumni. It is richer and more exciting than that. But to get the most out of life – and to connect to other people’s lives – you have got to take risks. You’ve got to be open and unafraid –certainly if the connection is to be deep and valuable.
So - to Pete, Amanda, Dick, Maggie F, Maggie G (who’d have thought that two randoms would have the same name!), Greg, Jon, Osio, Anna, and others - and yes, you, the person reading this wondering about our connection - thank you for being random, for transmitting / receiving when you did (and the way you did) and ultimately for connecting.
Whether it was brief, long or is still unfolding, I enjoy / enjoyed it and am grateful.
And to all my “institutional” friends - the ones I met at school, at work or at play, or even randomly once upon a time – you are appreciated equally deeply and fondly of course.
I wonder who I will meet tomorrow?
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