Last week was about Chutes and Ladders and recognizing that we all play on different boards.  This week we are going to reflect on Connect 4 and searching for connections.

In case you’ve never played Connect 4, it’s kind of like Tic-Tac-Toe.  The goal is to get 4 in a row.  In order to do this, you have to look for connections.  In this game, things can connect vertically, horizontally, and diagonally.  Alice recently received this game for her 6^th birthday, and as she started playing she initially didn’t ever look for connections diagonally.  Instead, she just focused on horizontal connections, and didn’t look further than this.  This led to her missing opportunities.  Over time, she’s learned to do a better job of looking for all kinds of different connections.

You might be wondering what this has to do with anything.  I think that life is often like a long game of Connect 4, where one of the goals is to connect with other people.  In Connect 4, you might make connections vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.  I bring all of the above up, because it is our responsibility to always look for ways to connect with each other. 

When it comes to connecting, there are some people I connect with faster than others.  These are usually the people who most closely resemble me and where I am in life.  While this is true, this doesn’t mean I should give up on connecting with other folks.  What this means is I might have to look and work harder to find connections.  Much like Alice, instead of only looking for horizontal connections I need to expand my thinking to find the diagonal, vertical, and other connections that exist.  We are all people, so at a foundational level that’s a powerful enough connection to at least getting started.  On top of all being human, as people we are all multi-dimensional.  For example, maybe we connect, because we work for Lilly.  Maybe we connect, because we are both parents.  Maybe we connect, because we are both nerds, love food, enjoy writing, watch similar movies, are both the oldest in our families, have been on awkward dates, love music, worked in a family business, have been through some similar struggles, etc.   I firmly believe that if we dig long enough, we can find a dimension we can connect on, and once we connect then the magic happens.

Something to ponder- I’m sure many of you have heard about what happened with two African American men who were wrongfully arrested for hanging out in Starbucks waiting for someone.  You can click HERE if you haven’t heard their story.  They were arrested, because a manager called the police to remove them.  I’ve sat in Starbucks and other establishments waiting for friends before and never had issues.  I can’t think of any of my white friends ever having issues.  I talked about this with a few colleagues last week, and I view this as a lack of connectedness problem.  I believe the manager called the police, because she saw these men as others and outsides, which to me suggests that she didn’t see connections with them.  I wonder if she would have stopped first to think of how she might be connected to these men, would she have felt the need to call the police? 

The challenge: Are you searching for all the ways you can connect?  Are you letting things get in the way of seeing how you connect with others?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry