Pakikipag-Ugnayan: On returning to authentic and meaningful connection
What can happen when we open ourselves up to more authentic and meaningful connections? I share a reflection from a recent webinar, and the past few months of returning to myself and community.
Note: In this post, I’d like to use the word “kapwa” whenever I refer to people other than our individual selves, because I’d like to start seeing how it would feel like to not name others as others. Kapwa recognizes a shared self with people we encounter or connect with or are in community with, and to translate it into English as others doesn’t fully convey its meaning.
Some of what I write here was shared during an interactive webinar I ran with Culture First Manila and Positive Workplaces on Pakikipag-Ugnayan: Creating A Culture of Connection at Work last March 13, 2024, also using Ugnayan Cards to facilitate participants’ reflection.
The value of connection
I know and feel how important connection, community and pakikipagkapwa are.
The most important personal and political skill to develop is how to be in relationship to others.
Mediation, facilitation, communication – these cannot be practices only for experts. This has to be part of the core set of skills that every human being gets to experience.
We have to internalize the ability to be in relationship with ourselves and others, so that we can see the truth – we are each tiny fragments of a greater whole, and we are each necessary.
- adrienne maree brown1
I know it very well in my mind.
According to the WHO, “high-quality social connections are essential to our mental and physical health and well-being”. Research shows that social isolation and loneliness have a serious impact on physical and mental health, quality of life, and longevity, comparable to risk factors such as smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity. In fact, social isolation and loneliness were named “global public health concerns” by the WHO, with an estimated 1 in 4 older people experiencing social isolation and 5-15% of adolescents experiencing loneliness. 2
In a 2022 report3 by Great Place to Work, they also identified meaningful connections as one of five key contributors to wellbeing at work — along with mental and emotional support, financial health, personal support and a sense of purpose. They stated supportive social relationships’ contribution to:
Lower stress levels
Increased sense of enjoyment
Psychological safety, teamwork and collaboration
Resilience to challenges and adversity
Reaching full potential
Beyond this, community can also give us more reasons for being. It had come out as a recurring word in my Masters dissertation on the motivation of sustainability leaders, in both my review of related literature, as well as in data I gathered from my interviews4, gleaning insights like:
Being with kapwa helps us learn about potential opportunities to effect change, and can increase feelings of self-efficacy, especially in the compounded metacrisis we face.
Getting feedback from kapwa on the work we do can help validate our need for identity, accomplishment, relatedness and contribution.
To sustain motivation, it is important to have a support system from which we might gain not only technical knowledge, but more importantly, a source of emotional strength and empathy.
I know it very well in my heart.
Beyond the very logical, research-based case for connection, I’ve known all these years how important connection has been for me personally. Even as an “anti-social introvert”. (And the truth is, I’m not really anti-social. I’m just choosy about the social interactions I prefer to have. And I’m an introvert, but I like going to certain events or even organizing them myself, because I want to connect with people that share similar values or interests.)
Connecting with others has allowed me to know myself more too, while also learning more about the world around me, and the experiences that kapwa also experience.
At the heart of meaningful connection or pakikipag-ugnayan is recognizing kapwa.
Meaningful connection involves showing our true selves to others, while also showing genuine care for our kapwa. This also reflects the definition identified by 90% of the employees surveyed for GPTW’s 2022 report (earlier referenced).
Kapwa recognizes a shared identity or a shared inner self with others or our fellow beings. Kapwa is “a moral obligation to treat one another as equal fellow human beings”, says Virgilio Enriquez, father of Sikolohiyang Pilipino.5
Kapwa is about returning to our humanity, and recognizing that we are more alike than different.
Returning to ourselves and each other
Over the pandemic, we isolated ourselves physically, but I noticed how I isolated myself psychologically at certain points too, even from the Muni community, which had been an important source of hope for me.
The past year or so has been a process of coming back to community. It’s not a magical or instantaneous process.
I’ve challenged myself to experience the discomfort of being with new groups, or have deeper-than-usual conversations with some people I already know.
I owe this opening up to many individuals and groups over the course of maybe the past 6 months or so, with majority of the experiences really happening this year or beginning in December 2023 with the launch of Ugnayan Cards. If I try to recall the different experiences, here’s a rundown: My Human-centered Coach Certification experience with Haraya Coaching, the Laya workshop with Jungle Gym Play Lab, Good Food Sundays, conversations with several friends (I think of times I had 1:1’s with some friends, chat exchanges, intimate meals with friends at home), running my Likha Ginhawa workshop and organizing the Pahuway trip to Negros Oriental, creating the Ugnayan Cards and organizing Ugnayan Tambayan with different partners (Paraluman & friends, Silent Book Club Manila, Libraria / Arts & Design Collective Dumaguete, Good Food Sundays), Flow facilitation training with the Good Grief Network, joining Sinag Wellbeing’s Hinga session, organizing a music therapy session, joining Habi’s LXD meetup, signing up for different dance and fitness (boxing, animal flow) classes and most recently Capoeira too — it’s a loooot! (I surprise myself just recalling all these, and I may have missed some things!)
Each time I took myself out of my comfort zone to connect, I could feel myself opening up more and more.
I chose things that brought me back into a sense of community — communities bound by collective care, wellbeing and liberation in their different forms.
I chose things that brought be back in touch with my body, breath, and my sense of joy and play.
These prompted my Ginhawa Para Sa Lahat drive (which you can still learn more about and support), and connected me more with Good Food Community’s initiatives.
As in my dissertation, these connective experiences help me to:
Increase my feeling of self-efficacy, or find or re-discover those opportunities to effect change in my own way
Validate my need for identity, relatedness, accomplishment and contribution
Find a source of emotional strength and empathy
Having a mindset of openness to experience and openness to others has helped me find this connection, which I am still continuing to cultivate. Bukas na tenga (open ears), bukas na puso (open heart), bukas na isip (open mind) is a constant refrain that helps set up the space for connection. And I’d like to invite you to reflect on what you may need more of in order to connect, based on the 12 wellbeing themes of Ugnayan Cards.
Consider reflecting on this: Which of the themes below needs your attention the most right now, in order to better connect with others (while also meeting your personal wellbeing needs)?
Then you can use the question connected to that theme as a point of reflection.
I’d love for you to let me know if this post resonates for you by sharing your insights in an IG story, and tagging @pagbubuo and @ugnayancards.
There’s also an opportunity for you to connect with community at our Ugnayan Tambayan at Good Food Sundays on March 17 (follow @ugnayancards on Instagram to see our Ugnayan Tambayan schedules).
I will leave you with the wonderful way adrienne maree brown speaks of the need to develop the practice of pakikipag-ugnayan, of being in community to practice and participate in care, seeing and being seen:
We don’t need perfect interactions, what we need is authentic connection.
To see and be seen.
To show ourselves to others and to show our care for others.
Let’s connect?
adrienne maree brown writes about being in relationship with others in this post she wrote in 2009.
Source: Great Place to Work (2022) How The Best Workplaces Invest In Their People. See other GPTW resources here.
Pe-Pua, R. & Protacio-Marcelino, E. (2000) Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology): A legacy of Virgilio G. Enriquez. Asian Journal of Social Psychology 3(1) pp. 49-71.