I love looking through old pictures. Those times when my family appeared happy with toothy smiles. Well, except for the one when my sister was minus her two front teeth.

There’s a snapshot of her in that stack of pictures from the 60’s when we were on our annual two-week camping vacation on Cape Cod. She was around six years old and wearing her dark red and navy-blue plaid seersucker bathing suit. It was a one piece with white piping on the pockets and yoke. I had one just like it. We would sit at the edge of the shore line at Nauset Beach waiting for waves to come up onto us and deposit sand in our pockets. We would laugh so hard. In the picture of us at the campground, my sister’s wearing her bathing suit with her beloved cowboy boots.

There’s a story of a woman who always cuts off the ends of her roast beef before roasting it. One day someone asked her why she removed the ends and she replied that her mother had always done it that way, it was how to cook a roast. Curious, when the woman asked her mother why she cut off the ends of the roast, the mother replied that it was the only way it would fit in her pan.

Do you cut the ends off your roast?

Most of us do. We learn things at an early age by observing our parents or caregivers. We also learn from social media, advertising, or from observing our peers. Those observations go into our subconscious and drive our thoughts and beliefs until we question them. So often though, we don’t question them because why would we? Only until they seem to be causing a problem, we are questioned by another or they present themselves as some sort of a discrepancy to something else we’ve learned more recently, do they ever rise to the level of being examined.

I used to worry what other people thought of me. Well, in all honesty, I still do, but not as much as a few years ago. It’s a process.

Spending time wondering what other people think can use up a lot of energy and precious time. And in the end, can we even really know what someone else is thinking?

Have you ever heard the saying “It’s none of your business what other people think of you”? It sounds a bit harsh, but think about it for a minute and you’ll see that it makes perfect sense.

Humans need connection. We’d all like the people in our lives to be like-minded or at least supportive, but sometimes they’re just not. Which can make connecting with others feel scary or like too much work. Perhaps you're someone who would love to just be by yourself for rest of your life. That can sound good, but…

The desire to connect is a human attribute that we need to intentionally bring back into vogue. Why? Because that’s how we grow.

When I think of connection, the image that forms in my mind is of a grid, a network, with a light at the intersection where two lines meet. The lines represent the energetic flow of myself and those people who are, or who will be, in my life. Life lines perhaps.