Active Ties

The circle of care might describe everyone who contributes to your sense of wellbeing, but it does not describe the connections that exist between its members. It also doesn’t describe how those members came to occupy their present positions. For a broader illustration of your circle, its origins, and what continues to hold it together, I’ve developed the concept of your active network.

The active network begins with the people most active in your circle: those who are constant, close, or core to your wellbeing. From there, it expands to include people from others' circles of care and broader communities of practice: book clubs, team sports, dinner parties, and all other recurring social projects are relevant here. This information comes together to depict the overall interconnectedness and cohesion of your circle (or a lack thereof). Is your circle completely integrated, with everyone knowing and caring for everyone else? Is it linked into separate groups, perhaps revealing a friend network separate from a family network? Knowing how your circle is connected can help you better understand how care flows through it, and the active network can help you visualize this flow.

Once you start connecting your active relations to their own circles and communities, you will see that your active network is held together with three basic ties: connection to a person, connection through a person, and connection through a community. I call these basic ties direct, mutual, and joint connections, but more types emerge if you combine the basic ones. I visualize these combinations with a colour wheel-inspired diagram that I call a cookie chart: its three concentric circles depict the basic first order elements, second order elements composed of two basics, and a third order element that contains all available elements.