5 friends, and the key to living longer
Do you have five people you can cry on the shoulder of?
Happy Easter to those who celebrate, and enjoy the long weekend if you have one in some parts of the world (like here in Australia).
Scouring the weekend newspapers is always an interesting exercise to see what draws my attention.
Prepping for Morning Musely takes the form of a reasonable amount of (pleasureable I might add) research.
There’s four newspapers, social feeds, magazine articles that have been saved from various travels.
A good headline does half the job for me, and this one from the AFR did just that.
‘Want to live longer? Make friends’ by Sam Irvine.
Amongst other things, it quotes the Harvard Study of Adult Development which has tracked the loves of Americans since 1938.
The general findings are that healthy relationships, more than success, money, or fame, are the biggest indicator of longevity.
Quoting from the article, Michelle Lim, Chief Executive of the Ending Loneliness Together network says:
“We know that having those strong connections means that you actually physiologically have less stress, and therefore fewer mental health issues. You are also more likely to practise health regulation behaviours”.
So how do we get the magic number of 5?
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar determined 150 as the upper limit of humans’ meaningful social network (those you could run into and not feel awkward in seeing them).
The article continues:
‘Within that 150, you should have 15 core friends you interact with regularly and whose deaths would devastate you. Boil that down to give, and these are the ‘cry on the shoulder’ friends, those you go to for the most high-level emotional support’.
Can you think of who your 5 are?
I can. I won’t name them here but I have a feeling they know who they are. Some are a regular (daily, weekly) part of my life while others I don’t see regularly at all but are always responsive for me in the same way I hope I am to them.
Also and very importantly, are you part of the ‘5’ for someone else? They might need a shoulder to cry on soon. Let them know you’ve got their back no matter what.
