Our ingrained habits change us. Neurons that fire together, wire together, neuroscientists like to say, reflecting the increasing evidence that experiences leave imprints on our neural pathways, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. Any habit molds the very structure of your brain in ways that strengthen your proclivity for that habit.
Plasticity, the propensity to be shaped by experience, isn’t limited to the brain. You already know that when you lead a sedentary life, your muscles atrophy to diminish your physical strength. What you may not know is that your habits of social connection also leave their own physical imprint on you.
Fredrickson and her team put their subjects through a course intended to develop empathy and compassion towards themselves and others, and found that as individual's real, face-to-face interactions with other people improved, so too did their health. What's more--and this is the crazy part--there is an actual correlation between healthy interpersonal relationships and cardiovascular health! In other words, its literally good for your heart to be in community with others.
Therefore, as we spend more time glued to our phones--and less time engaging with those around us--the less able we become to create relational bonds with one another.
Therefore, as we spend more time glued to our phones--and less time engaging with those around us--the less able we become to create relational bonds with one another.
In short, the more attuned to others you become, the healthier you become, and vice versa. This mutual influence also explains how a lack of positive social contact diminishes people. Your heart’s capacity for friendship also obeys the biological law of “use it or lose it.” If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so...
When you share a smile or laugh with someone face to face, a discernible synchrony emerges between you, as your gestures and biochemistries, even your respective neural firings, come to mirror each other. It’s micro-moments like these, in which a wave of good feeling rolls through two brains and bodies at once, that build your capacity to empathize as well as to improve your health.
If you don’t regularly exercise this capacity, it withers. Lucky for us, connecting with others does good and feels good, and opportunities to do so abound.
Now, this isn't really news to anybody. We all know the smart phone/social media explosion has had a generally negative influence on interpersonal relationships (save us from our phones!). But it should shake us up a little bit to know that there is a growing collection of data to confirm it. People are lonelier than ever before, and wondering why, when they seem so "connected" to everybody all the time. Fredrickson gives us, at least in part, an answer.
The implications are widespread, especially when considering the issue from a Christian worldview. Words like "community" and "connection" have reached ubiquity in Christian churches and books, but for good reason. We need each other. We were created this way. Its important for our hearts--spiritually, physically--to know others, and be known by them. What the gospel tells us is that what prohibits this is our sin. Knowing we should be perfect, but are not, makes us fear that if the person with whom we want to relate (friend, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, mother, father, son, daughter, etc.) were to really know us in the repulsiveness of our thoughts, desires, and actions, they would want no part of it. And so we manage what they see. This is not new. But it amplifies something we've always been doing.
The implications are widespread, especially when considering the issue from a Christian worldview. Words like "community" and "connection" have reached ubiquity in Christian churches and books, but for good reason. We need each other. We were created this way. Its important for our hearts--spiritually, physically--to know others, and be known by them. What the gospel tells us is that what prohibits this is our sin. Knowing we should be perfect, but are not, makes us fear that if the person with whom we want to relate (friend, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, mother, father, son, daughter, etc.) were to really know us in the repulsiveness of our thoughts, desires, and actions, they would want no part of it. And so we manage what they see. This is not new. But it amplifies something we've always been doing.
Things like Facebook, Twitter, and the like make it easier than ever for us to create and manage an identity which will present us in the most favorable light possible. And it is wonderfully (tragically) ironic that as we're doing these things in an effort to ensure relational eligibility, in the hope that we will be known, we are actually dulling and weakening our ability to do so. What we are doing here is, at the root, an exercise in self-justification. We are, through the augmentation of what people perceive to be true about us, attempting to obtain the confirmation from others (including God, I would argue, even if we don't think we are) that we are "right or reasonable"--Webster's definition of the word "justify".
This idea--that if we can keep people from knowing us at our worst we can find deep connection, love, relationships, etc.--is exactly the opposite of what we find in the gospel. It is true that our sin is repulsive, deep, dark, and severe. But what we find in the work of Jesus for us is that for Christians, who we are has been hidden in who he is. And because of this, we are free to open ourselves to one another and be honest about the reality that we are not who we should have been, and joyful about the fact that who we should have been has been granted us in love through Christ. In other words, what matters, ultimately, is not what others think of you, because Christ covered you with himself. You can rest from the endless and exhausting task of proving yourself right to others and to God. Its an impossible and dishonest task anyway. You and I are not right--to God or to others. But Christ has united himself to those who believe in him in such a way that we may call him brother, co-heirs in all the blessing that is due to him. That's God's solution to our problem. With it, you can rest and go free.
So understand and fight against the natural inclination to self-justify. But also remember that God has created you to be in relationship with real people in time and space. This world is his good creation, and we, as Fredrickson shows, are made to be in relationship with one another. But what we all want won't come through the most meticulously edited Facebook profile, or the most witty and followed Twitter feed. This is only possible, in its fullest, most restful and most fulfilling sense, in real life protected by the justification we receive before God and man through faith in Jesus Christ.
In light of all this, Fredrickson offers this wonderful bit of advice:
So the next time you see a friend,or a child, spending too much of their day facing a screen, extend a hand and invite him back to the world of real social encounters. You’ll not only build up his health and empathic skills, but yours as well. Friends don’t let friends lose their capacity for humanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment