I've always had a hard time connecting with people.
Not in a "I'm awkward at parties" way.
(Well, yea, I guess sometimes that too.)
But it's always felt like most conversations going on were happening on a frequency that I just couldn't tune into.
Then again, once in a great while, I meet someone and just know, within minutes (or seconds) that I relate to this person.
There's a type of recognition that happens that goes deeper than things like even shared interests or having a common ground. It's not "we both play tennis" or "we're in same industry", but something underneath that.
It's something that I could never quite explain, but just knew it when I felt it.
This week I figured it out.
I just read Andre Agassi's autobiography "Open". He was my tennis idol growing up -- but I knew nothing about him. I just watched him compete (and saw him live in his heyday... Sampras vs. Agassi at the Gund in Cleveland, back in the early 90's!).
I watched how he played and competed, and something about him deeply resonated with me in a way that I just couldn't explain -- at 10 years old.
It turns out that Andre spent his entire career at war with himself. He was destroyed by perfectionism, which shot-down his self-confidence.
He had a love-hate relationship with his craft. But even though he hated what he did, he chose to do it anyway because the alternative was worse.
He searched for meaning beyond rankings or metrics, and eventually found it by defining his purpose as "service for others".
I've also lived with all of these struggles. In a completely different context, but fighting the same war.
And that's when it clicked.
The people I connect with -- which aren't many -- all share this thread.
We've fought the same internal battles against ourselves. We've had similar feelings of needing to do things perfectly, and it wound up paralyzing rather than motivating us.
There's a certain guilt about liking, but not loving the thing that you're supposedly great at, and we keep searching for something that actually matters on a deeper level... something that doesn't show up on the scoreboard.
I think many of us deeply introspective people develop a kind of radar for this in others.
I've spent years mapping myself out internally; trying to identify patterns, triggers, and things that make me feel uncomfortable. And I also recognize those same patterns in others. But this happens on a level I'm not even conscious of.
My nervous system just vibrates a bit and says "yup, this is my kinda person" because it understands the frequency happening on another, non-audible or visual level.
This is why it's rare for me to develop a connection with people, because I'm not matching on anything that is surface-level. Instead, I'm unconsciously matching on the depth of a similar struggle that this other person has also gone through.
It's a vastly smaller pool of people, but when it happens, it's a real connection (at least on my end) and it happens immediately.
If you've ever met someone and instantly felt like you'd known them forever -- before knowing anything about them -- maybe you have this same level of hidden pattern recognition.
You weren't hearing their story or connecting with words, but recognizing their struggle; because you've lived it too.