Published on 24th July 2025 Connect I read a lot about the idea of connecting with people. They say it's the reason to get good at conversation — so you can connect. A problem I had with this advice is I couldn't find a good explanation of what connecting means. It means mutual empathy — they get you and you get them. It's discovering similar values, experiences and perspectives. It's a feeling of trust and comfort where you both feel safe to say what is truly on your mind. That feeling is why I started this website. Six months I asked myself what should I do for the rest of my life. A good place to start was to figure out what makes me happy. So, I wrote down the best experiences of my life so far. I came up with 20. 19 of them were experiences where I connected with people. Humans need connection. If loneliness is a disease then connection is the cure. It fills a hole that can't be filled any other way. Connecting requires lowering your guard to expose how you think and feel. This leads to revealing your values, experiences and perspectives. People hate small talk because it avoids this. The purpose of social conversation is to connect but talking about the weather or the latest sportz ball result reveals sh!t. Making friends is easy as a kid, hard as an adult As a child, I didn't have my guard up — because there was nothing to guard. A six year old hardly has values, experiences and perspectives. They freely offer how they think and feel and thus instantly connect with others. As I grew up, I had experiences where exposing how I thought and felt resulted in pain. Like when I asked someone out on a date for the first time and was rejected. That required exposing deep feelings, making me vulnerable. This mad the pain of rejection visceral. I don't like pain and try to avoid it. Therefore, I took steps to prevent that from happening again — by erecting a concrete wall to prevent anyone seeing who I was interested in. This protects me. Makes me less vulnerable. As I continued to grow, I had more of these experiences, so I erected more walls. By the time we're adults, we have so many walls that trying to find out what someone thinks or feels is like talking to a wall. These walls are a double edged sword. They protect but also isolate. Preventing some painful experiences while being the source of another — disconnection. If we want to be happy, we need to have our needs met. This requires lowering our walls. The next time someone asks "How are you?", try answering honestly.