The neighborhood I grew up in was every kids dream. Countless houses full of kids and open-door policies. We would walk into one neighbor’s kitchen at 9 am on a Saturday to play scrabble, then be in the other neighbor’s pool by lunch. But my absolute favorite, the last-minute, late-night games of hide and go seek.
Boundaries? Forget them. We would span the whole neighborhood hiding. Flashlights? Absolutely not. Only the street lamps. We would stay out there for hours while the person who was “it” wondered up and down the streets. The name of the game was to not be found. If you were found, you lost. There was that rush of adrenaline that came when you thought someone was getting close.
But I always would reach that moment where if it had been too long, I was ready for someone to say “okay I give up.” I wouldn’t dare lose the game, but the moment that white flag was waved, you best believe I was crawling out from behind whatever set of trees I was most likely tucked away in – it was the permission to come out of hiding.
The permission to come out of hiding.
A lot of us played hide-and-seek as kids and oddly enough here at age 29 I have been thinking about it a lot these days. I think there is a chance that we have been lullabied into thinking that the name of the game is not to be found. Don’t be seen. Don’t be known. Don’t really connect.
Not because we ultimately want that to be the case but it’s easier, safer. Less risk. Less vulnerability.
I believe that with that comes the rise of the loss of connection – to ourselves and to one another.
Loneliness tells us no one will show up for us but then anxiety tells us we don’t have what it takes to show up. It becomes a spiral of emotions that keep us from the very thing most of us desire – to be seen, to be connected.
So we settle for the false sense of connection. At our fingertips are all the ways that make it extremely easy to believe that we aren’t as disconnected as we think.
Social media.
Dating apps.
Doordash.
Kioask in Restaurants.
Amazon.
Don’t get me wrong, I am frequent user of a lot of these things but as I think about it more and more, I am seeing so clearly how even technology is a place we can hide. It lets us be in complete control of what others see. It is a false sense of reality and a false sense of connection.
In a TED Talk, Johann Hari makes the statement that, “the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.”
How many times have you heard someone talk about how addicted we are to technology? We like to point fingers and say it’s mostly teenagers, but we all know it’s not just them.
So what’s the point?
The point is we are in desperate need for more human-to-human connection. And we can each help be part of making that happen.
And where is this all coming from?
For the last 8 months I have tossed and turned at night thinking about how to get this younger generation be better at customer service. That is my entire job. But what I am starting to finally realize is that when I step back pull up from the “work” and look at the state of humanity – the issue might be more than what meets the eye.
It is impossible to serve others wells if we don’t see them for where they are really at. We can’t see people for where they are really at if we aren’t connected with them. We can’t connect with them if we ourselves don’t know what it means to be connected.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s just young people not wanting to do things – I think they might be terrified of it. We fear what feels unknown and in a lot of ways, sometimes the very things we are asking of people isn’t common to them. We have to recognize that.
Hospitality.
It’s what I desire so deeply to be happening more – the output. But what a paradox, that what is going to lead to the output are the same things being the input.
Hospitality welcomes people in, just as they are, and says, “there is space here for you.”
Hospitality is offering the permission to come out of hiding.
So when I sit down at work to make a list of all the things I think people should do to show hospitality, I have to pause and realize, that list is for me before it is for them.
You can’t expect of someone what they have not experienced.
But here is the good news – you and I can be the ones to let others experience it.
Hospitality has become a major industry and list of instructions for employees. What a tragedy it will be if we minimize it to that. That is not what is started as. It started as an invitation – the welcoming of strangers into your home.
To use the language of the game – tag, you are it. Go find someone. Tell them it’s safe for them to come out of hiding. Make space for them.
Maybe people are just waiting for the invitation….
And if i had to guess, once they feel invited, they will pass the invitation along too.