Connection Starts With Noticing

The quiet practice that builds friendship and belonging

I’m going to be talking about something I think matters more than almost anything else for men in midlife. Friendship. Connection. And why so many of us have plenty of people around us but still feel like nobody really knows what’s going on.

This is week one.

One Story

I was recording Safe Harbour Podcast with my mate Phil Askew and at some point in the conversation I mentioned something my granddad used to say to me when I was a kid.

Always notice the people who don’t get noticed.

I’ve been thinking about that line ever since. Because I think it’s one of the most quietly powerful things anyone has ever said to me, and I’m not sure I fully understood it until years after he was gone.

Phil told me something in the episode that I want to share.

Every morning at six o’clock he goes to his local park and on the way he passes the same road sweeper.

High-vis jacket, headphones on, pushing his trolley. By every measure an invisible man. Phil doesn’t know his name. They’ve never had a real conversation. But every morning Phil waves and says all right, how you doing, and the man always waves back.

Phil said: I know his silhouette a mile off now. And I hope it makes his morning.

That stayed with me. Because that road sweeper, wearing the brightest jacket on the street, is probably invisible to most of the people who walk past him. The high-vis makes him visible and invisible at the same time. Functional. Part of the furniture. Not worth stopping for.

I was in Wetherspoons a couple of weeks ago and I said something to the woman standing next to me. Large gin for three o’clock in the afternoon. She laughed. Said she’d just retired that day. We ended up sitting out in the garden for an hour in the sun having a genuinely good conversation about her life and work and what came next. Complete strangers. She could have given me a look and turned away. She didn’t. Because I went first and she felt the permission of it.

And then there was the man at my daughter’s restaurant a while back. He was in his eighties, came and asked if he could join me at the table, and within ten minutes I found out he’d worked at Windsor Castle for decades, been personal friends with the Queen until she died, survived mouth cancer, throat cancer, and both knees replaced. When he got up to leave he looked me in the eye and said, me and you are going to see each other again. He meant it.

These people are walking around everywhere, all the time. Every one of them carrying a life I know nothing about. Every one of them quietly hoping someone will notice them today.

The connection most men are looking for isn’t somewhere else. It’s in the next conversation they almost don’t have.

One Shift

I think a lot of men believe connection is something that happens to them when the conditions are right.

When they find the right group, the right mate, the right moment. And so they wait for it, and it doesn’t come, and the waiting gradually hardens into a story that they’re just not the kind of person who finds it easy.

But here’s what I’ve noticed over years of working with men and talking to strangers in pubs and doing all the things my dad tells me are weird. Connection isn’t waiting for you somewhere. It’s available in almost every interaction you have today. The person behind the counter. The man on the train. The colleague you’ve nodded at for six months without ever actually talking to.

Most men don’t lack the desire for connection. They lack the habit of creating it. And the habit starts with something so small it barely counts as a risk. It starts with noticing someone. Asking their name. Saying something real instead of something polite.

One Challenge

I want you to do one thing. Notice one person who doesn’t usually get noticed.

The person serving you your coffee, the cleaner at your gym, the man at the bar on his own… Anyone.

Ask their name, connect for a while, get curious about them and watch what lights them up…

Notice how they respond.

Notice how it makes you feel.

▶ Safe Harbour: Phil Askew

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” — Leo Buscaglia

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Listen on your commute. Or your lunch break. Or that walk you keep meaning to take.