It’s Never a Bad Time for Pudding

Alt. title: What Pudding Can Teach Us About Human Connection

During the early days of the COVID (and by early days I mean the washing-your-bags, binge-watching Tiger King, hoarding-toilet-paper, and PSAs-about-not-touching-your-face days), we were scared about our health and that of our loved ones. The news was scary. The internet was scary. A random cough was scary. It was a time.

In my household of four, I was the one who masked up and left the house to brave Costco, Trader Joe’s, and basically anywhere else that involved interacting with other people. I was extremely diligent about social distancing...and not touching my face. There was one experience from that time period that has stuck with me for what it taught me about human connection.

One evening, I left home to brave our local supermarket. It was a pretty depressing experience. It was late, I felt bad for the employees, toilet paper was sold out, and the store was dotted with individuals doing the same thing I was. Before leaving, I asked my wife if there was any treat I could pick up for her. (Note: this was a time of frequent self-care, which involved a lot of sweet treats after the kids went to sleep.) She mentioned that she hadn’t had pudding in a while, and I didn’t need any more prompting than that.

At checkout, the store manager, Dave, was covering for an employee who was on break. Dave looked tired under his mask. Here was a guy on the front lines of an unseen virus, serving as the (night) captain of the ship. I asked him how he was holding up. He sighed and said he was getting off work in an hour. He was sort of mindlessly moving all my items through the bar code scanner when he noticed my various containers of pudding. I didn’t know what my wife would like, so I grabbed a handful of different options: chocolate (obviously), tapioca (it was on sale), and rice (because why not?). Dave eyes lit up and said “that’s a lot of pudding.” I replied by saying that sometimes you just need to have some pudding and he responded that “it was never a bad time for pudding.” We were 100% in alignment on that point.

As I was walking out, I remember thinking that it was the first time I had had a conversation with a stranger in months...and it was about pudding! While the interaction with Dave lasted less than five minutes, it has stuck with me years later because of how authentic it was. It was a moment of solidarity around something random—and delicious. It was a moment of connection. A moment I didn’t realize I was missing.

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We’re luckily on the other side of a global pandemic but we’re still stuck in patterns of behavior that keep us just as disconnected in the service of productivity. We’re not social distancing at home anymore out of fear for our health. Instead, we are distancing ourselves from human connection through our self-inflected patterns around busyness. When asked “busy doing what?” most people reply with some version of “busy being busy.” Of course we are busy, but one of the things that often seems to be sacrificed at the altar of all this busyness is connection—with family, with friends, with the people right in front of us. We know it’s essential and worth finding the moments to foster it in our busy lives and yet we can’t seem to get out of our own heads.

We sometimes feel like we need to have everything sorted out before we can connect with others. Once I’m done with my to-do list, I’ll call my mom. Let me just get through these emails and I’ll then play with my kids. Once I finish this blog post, I’ll have time to socialize. (Ahem.) The reality is that we don’t need to wait for connection. In fact, waiting for the perfect time will likely mean missing out on experiences that could serve as a salve for busy lives.

Similar to how Buddhist Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh writes about opportunities for mindfulness in the modern world that are all around us (e.g., car horns, ringing telephones, sitting in traffic) we can similarly find connection in everyday moments if we allow it: a passing nod at the post office, a thumbs-up when you see someone wearing a (insert your favorite sports team here) jersey, or whatever causes Subaru owners to always wave at each other. We need to stop waiting for ideal conditions to connect and instead just start doing it.

In my coaching practice, I’ve seen many instances of regret—regret for not taking action, not taking the road less traveled, or passing up quality time with family and friends. Is our busyness worth it? Is the isolation worth it?

There’s a lot of research from psychology, public health, and neuroscience showing that human connection (i.e., having supportive, meaningful relationships and social ties) is fundamentally important to physical health, mental health, longevity, and overall well-being. These findings all point to the same ultra-basic/obvious conclusion: connection is good, and lack of connection is bad. There’s no need to overcomplicate it.

Author George Saunders recently said in an interview, “Human contact is the only thing that matters,” and while that may be a bit of an overstatement, the spirit of it resonates. We can be busy and still make time to connect. But it requires intention. An intentional choice to not neglect the things that we know help feel connected to others.

So next time you’re at the checkout counter and someone starts talking to you about pudding, accept the fleeting moment of solidarity and bask in the gratitude for what it is: blessed human connection.

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Book Recommendations on Human Connection:

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, Brené Brown

The Laws of Connection: The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network, David Robson

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, David Brooks

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(Store Bought) Pudding Recommendations:

Kozy Shack, Original Recipe Chocolate Pudding

Petit Pot, Creamy French Recipe Rice Pudding

Goya, Tembleque (Puerto Rican Coconut Pudding)

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Thank you for reading my first Rhetorical Exercise Substack post. I plan to share stories and “wisdom” from my performance coaching practice bi-weekly that will help you perform better at the things that matter most—while having some fun in the process.