Social Connectedness: Journey With Others

Last weekend, one of the last weekends of 2015, was very hectic. By Sunday night, I realized how we didn’t have any dinner at home for three days!  On Saturday, I attended a close friend’s 25th wedding anniversary in Reston, Virginia, while my husband and son went out with his family to a holiday dinner.   I was one of the bridemaids in her wedding, and it was nostalgic to watch the slide show and see how young the bride looked 25 years ago.  Where has all that time gone? 

Early Sunday, my mother-in-law and I and a group of friends hiked the Billy Goat Trail off the C&O Canal for almost two hours.  I rushed home just in time to take my son to Northern Virginia again for lunch with my brothers and father.  I raced to a grocery store, after dropping my son back at home, with a long list of vegetables to make soup for a neighbor who is under treatment for cancer.  I gave myself 30 minutes to get in and out of the store, gliding and running in my hiking clothes, came home and spent an hour preparing the ingredients for the soup before rushing out of the house to a friend’s home for another group dinner.  I still can’t believe how quickly I chopped all those vegetables to add to the soup!  My son was instructed to turn off the stove in three hours after I left the house.  My neighbor can’t swallow solid food anymore; the vegetables have to be extremely soft for her to mash up and swallow.  I added so many “therapeutic” ingredients to my soup, from anice to cinnamon, ginger and thyme, hoping they will somehow heal her or at least give her some energy before her upcoming surgery.

Sunday night, I was physically exhausted from all my social activities.  Mentally, I was happy.  I always preach to my friends about living our moments fully, and I sure lived every moment of my weekend.  So many relationships, so little time.  Is time flying by  too quickly, or did my sense of aging give time its urgency? 

During a TEDMED talk, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy stressed the four important factors to achieve happiness: Gratitude exercises, meditation, physical activity and social connectedness. He believes it is essential to build good relationships for happiness.

Another great TED Talk about happiness is that of Harvard Professor Robert Waldinger.  In his talk, Dr. Waldinger presented data from a Harvard men study on happiness, started in 1930 to present days.  The study confirmed how social investment in personal relationships is the most important factor for happiness.  It is not fame, money or achievement as young people often believe that ultimately make them happy.  He advised people to lean on their good relationships to be happy.  This 12 minute TedTalk can be heard from the below link: 

During this holiday season, I hope you will reach out to your friends and families.  Like Dr. Murthy, I also hope you would reach out to the lonely people whom you know and try to pull them into your circle of comfort.  Lonely people are most vulnerable in times of festivities.  If you are lonely, it is also important for you to reach out to others.  You don’t have to walk alone in the world.  Good relationships can be built over time, with great effort.  

Start paying attention to activities in your community.  Go to your town’s festivals or arts and crafts shows with friends, form a walking or running small group and meet in a scenic area at a designated time each week, join a gym or a yoga studio, or form a bootcamp group and hire a trainer to run the group.  It is worth it to spend all the time to foster understanding and friendship.  

Our LadyDocsCornerCafe group of friends has done just that for the last five years.  We now have a Saturday bootcamp class, a Sunday morning running or walking group on the C&O canal followed by happy hour at a local Starbucks Cafe, a Sunday afternoon yoga session, and live online interval training classes on weekday evenings when some of us see our friends in little squares on the computer for the 30 minutes intensive workout.  The online trainer “unmutes” us at the end of the session so we can chat with each other for a few minutes.  

None of us in the group can do every activity each week, but somehow, we manage to create a wider and wider circle of friendship every year, explaining how my family has to race from one activity to another in our weekends.  We have challenged and nurtured each other’s minds with multiple conversations about all kinds of topics including politics, social issues, healthcare, during these sessions.  We have helped many patients by seeking each other’s opinions.  Just last weekend, through multiple emails, some of us managed to get an eye consult and possible free surgery for a impoverished man in Vietnam who needs cataract surgery to save his one functioning eye he has left.  He is now connected to an American trained ophthalmologist in Saigon who will do the curtesy evaluation and surgery for him.  Somehow, through the chain emails, one of us reached out to a friend of a friend who knows the surgeon.  Relationships can achieve incredible tasks.

Relationships also remind us of the biggest lesson about life, that no life is perfect.  All of us have our own struggles as we inch along in this world.  It is always heart warming and reassuring to know that we don’t have to bear our burdens alone, that our friends and families are there to lift our burdens along with us.  

We wish you a happy holiday season and hope you maintain many good relationships this upcoming year!