If you take a close look at any group of children in a family, kindergarten, or playground, you’ll probably notice certain behaviors that those kids have in common. If you persevere, you’ll most likely trace the source of those behaviors back to two common roots. In my humble opinion, those root sources are twin desires embedded in every youngster: a yearning for affection, and a craving for attention.

The affection part is understandable. From the moment we’re born, we’re like bottomless vessels waiting to be filled up with love. And most parents do their utmost to pour plenty of it into those sweet little vessels. If they don’t, the child will likely spend the rest of his life seeking what it needed but didn’t get.

And then there’s the other part of the equation: the need for attention.

“Look at me! Look at me, Ma (or Abba, or Morah, or whoever’s notice the attention-seeker is seeking)!” How kids love to be rewarded with a smile and a compliment! Like our need for affection, that’s something we never outgrow.

If a child doesn’t feel loved, he may try to compensate by acting out in order to receive more attention. And, as we’ve said, these twin cravings don’t go away when we grow up. We just tailor our conduct to get what we need in a more adult setting.

But things change as we grow older. The average healthy adult doesn’t go around seeking affection from strangers. Satisfied with the love of his family and close friends, he seeks something else from people outside his inner circle. Something that looks more like respect and admiration.

In a similar vein, there are plenty of adults who don’t seek attention. In fact, they find others’ scrutiny irritating or even threatening. All they really want is to be left alone to do their own thing. What happened to the universal human drive to be seen?

Perhaps they, too, want something a little different from simple attention. Something that carries more weight.

I think we can expand our definitions of the two drives and give them a different label. Instead of the affection and attention we see youngsters vying for, when it comes to the larger world, we might say that their adult counterparts wish for connection and recognition. This terminology, I think, better describes the reality we all experience.

Let me explain what I mean.

Restoring Humanity

When small cottage industries started being replaced by factories, people were packed into those factories to run assembly lines with little concern for their health or well-being.  A lot has changed since then. Society has gradually tried to restore some of what was lost in the workplace. And not only in terms of humane treatment for workers.

Corporations have begun to try to foster a more personal enthusiasm for both the workplace and the work product. An enthusiasm that was lost when crafting goods at home gave way to the vast, impersonal sprawl of the Industrial Revolution.

With its myopic focus on the bottom line, Big Business disgruntled many modern-day workers. Eventually, Big Business grew savvy enough to understand that the mood of their employees and the workplace environment affect productivity, which in turn impacts that all-important bottom line.

Thus arose a new concept in corporate life called team building. Basically, this involves trying to get employees to view the job as more than just a paycheck. The firm management tries to inculcate in each worker a sense of identification with the corporation. To make employees feel as though they’re part of a team all working toward a mutual goal. In his way, the reasoning goes, the atmosphere at work becomes more pleasant, productivity soars, and the firm’s bank account swells.

Team building rests on the foundation we’ve been talking about: the basic human desire for connection. By imbuing employees with the sense that they’re not a bunch of disparate individuals trying to earn a living, but rather a cohesive group with common interests, corporations hope to make them feel more personally invested in something that’s not really personal at all. To give them a sense of a shared mission. Of having each other’s backs. Of being, almost, a family.

This is how Big Business aims to meet the basic human need for belonging and connection.

At the same time, many corporations offer more tangible and practical   incentives such as bonuses, improved hours and so on, in return for harder work and enhanced production…. all in the name of the other basic human drive for recognition. Talent and ability are rewarded, dedication even more so. Go the extra mile for the firm, and you’ll get the extra dividend. Or just a shout-out in the corporate newsletter.

At the end of the day, however, a corporation is not a family. If you ever listen to clips that poke fun of what’s known as “corporate speak,” you’ll quickly pick up on the divide between what’s said and what’s actually felt.

A firm’s HR representative, for example, may tell a disappointed employee that she’s “so sorry” about the smaller-than-usual bonus this year, without actually feeling sorry at all. When asked for consideration, she might state, firmly and with feigned sympathy, that “unfortunately, there’s nothing that can be done.” All the right words are said to give the impression of caring, while little actual caring is involved at all.

All the team building in the world can’t disguise the fact that bosses and underlings view the purpose of the team from very different perspectives. And all the pretty HR speeches in the world can’t hide the truth that, however hard it may work to put soulful words into the mouths of management, at the end of the day a corporation is soulless.

Brotherhood of Man

Contrast this with just about any Yid who encounters another Yid. In the airport, on a train, in the hospital, we may not even know each other’s names and yet we’re family. A real family. This means that we instinctively recognize one another. We’re prepared to look out for one another. The sense of connection is far more than a question of saying the right words. It’s authentic belonging.

Just the other day, I was in a car with my daughter and son-in-law in a city not our own, when said son-in-law wanted to daven before we continued our trip. We were in a very Jewish neighborhood, albeit one that was unfamiliar to us. All he had to do was roll down the window and call out at a random passer-by, “Do you know where I can find a minyan for Mincha?”

The passer-by was only too glad to help. Instant recognition, one Yid to another, gave rise to instant connection. They may never have laid eyes on each other before, but they belonged to the same team. A few minutes later, my son-in-law, in the way of Jews from time immemorial, slipped seamlessly into a random minyan in a random shul, all of them joined together for a few minutes to connect with each other in connecting to their Creator. How amazing is that?

Every day, in Aleinu, we express our longing for the day when not only all Jews, but all of mankind, will join together in a brotherhood of man under the benevolent rule of the One Who will reign over us all.

Then all humanity will call upon Your Name… All the world’s inhabitants will recognize and know that to You every knee should bend, every tongue should swear… And they will all accept upon themselves the yoke of Your kingship.

Every time we say these timeless words, we are forging a connection. We are building toward a worldwide team with a soul.

And with every mitzvah we do, we ask for and receive the recognition we crave. Recognition which comes from the only One Whose attention is really worth having.