The common experiences you share with others don't have to be that dramatic (although adversity definitely brings people together). Anything you experience together that creates a common history helps to connect you to others.

Are we quick to respond to others' needs? Do we run from problems or face them? Do we talk more about bad news or good news? Do we give people the benefit of the doubt, or do we assume the worst? The

Connect emotionally through facial expressions, laughter, and tears.

How do the people around you react to the sparks of life? Are they fire lighters who blow things up, or firefighters who calm things down?

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

In the adversity of our best friends we often find something that does not displease us.

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy, you must have somebody to divide it with.

When you're blessed, the haters come out. When you wear God's blessings well, don't be surprised if it draws jealousy out on people.

And all the while one spirit uttered this, The other one did weep so, that, for pity, I swooned away as if I had been dying, And fell, even as a dead body falls.

A good death is a death in solidarity with others. To prepare ourselves for a good death, we must develop or deepen this sense of solidarity.

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

When you fly across the country in an airplane the country seems vast; but it isn't vast. It's all connected by roads one can ride a bike down. If you watch the news and there's a tragedy at a house in Kansas, that guy's driveway connects with yours, and you'd be surprised by how few roads it takes to get there.