DO YOU BELIEVE
that a
LIFE TIME
can be lived in a moment. . .
Maybe the saddest thing
about this one minute award winning film
is that it’s
J U S T
A ONE MINUTE AWARD WINNING FILM
(And not a an-everyday-reality)
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst
Be
A Caring Catalyst
enough to
DISPROVE
IT
A Dad’s DAD
Dick Hoyt died on March 17 and yet he’s never been more alive. . .
WHO???
Who exactly. . .
I never met Mr Hoyt
but I read/heard about him years ago
when I was still running marathons
at a pretty good clip
and an even better speed
but nothing like
Dick Hoyt
did. . .
STRONGEST DAD IN THE WORLD
RICK REILLY is a great writer and a very frequent contributor to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and I not only bow to his craft but instead of even trying to rephrase or even poorly plagiarize him, I thought I’d share what he had to say but I deeply felt:
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.
Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.
Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life,” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”
But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.“
“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.”
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”
That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.
“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”
How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.
Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?
Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.
“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.
“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”
To see a photo gallery of Dick and Rick Hoyt, go to SI.com/teamhoyt. If you have a comment for Rick Reilly, send it to reilly@siletters.com.
“Dad, when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
Dick Hoyt gives his son that feeling as often as he can.
Kind of gives
FATHER’S DAY
a whole new meaning, huh. . .
M A Y B E
m a y b e
all those years
all those races
all those marathons
all those Ironmen Triathlons
he wasn’t pushing his son, Rick so much
as he was pushing me
and anyone else who took notice
TO BE A NO LIMIT
d a d
TO BE A NO LIMIT
p e r s o n
TO BE
what it took
when it took
how it took
TO BE
what was truly needed
instead of merely
wanted. . .
KAZE NO DENWA (Phone of the Wind)
“Hello. If you’re out there, please listen to me.” On a hill overlooking the ocean in Otsuchi Town in northeastern Japan is a phone booth known as the “Telephone of the Wind.” It is connected to nowhere, but people come to “call” family members lost during the tsunami of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Many visit the phone booth including a mother and 3 children who have lost their father. This documentary looks at the unique role that this phone is playing in helping the grieving process of many.
KIND OF CHILLING, huh. . . ?
QUESTION:
WHO WOULD YOU CALL
on the Wind Phone
Kaze no denwa (phone of the wind)
curling whispers from the depths of the earth
carried by the wind
through every crack and crevice
finally reaching my ear
i’ve missed your smile
your warm glow
gentle touches
please come back to me
i want to hear your voice again.
in a little town
on the coastline of Japan
stands a white phone booth
in a small backyard
in the booth is a telephone
rotary, the clicking numbers
line going nowhere
but the wind carries words
of the lost loved to us
so we can speak to them again
“grandpa, are you well?”
“i won a prize in school today!”
“is it cold over there?”
maybe i can’t hear your voice
for real again
but
if for one instant
i could say “i love you”
i’d be happy.
In Otsuchi, Japan, there is a telephone booth with a rotary phone with an unconnected phone line. It was built by Itaru Sasaki after his cousin died in 2010 as a way to talk to him and have closure. Many from Otsuchi use the phone to talk to loved ones lost in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Some come for one long talk to say things they could not, and some regularly visit to talk to the deceased about everyday things. It’s become a way to connect to the past and the one’s they’ve lost, since many Japanese do not usually tell people that they love them often to their face. It’s a way to lay regrets to rest. Sasaki said that he wanted the line to not connect to anything, so that his words would be carried on the wind to his cousin. And so, the wind phone remains.
. . .R E M A I N S
to let us know that
L O V E
is the one thing
IN AND OUT OF THIS WORLD
that CONNECTS US
and with or without a phone
it’s the clearest connection
you’ll ever experience. . .
Now,
about THAT Call. . .
get to dialing
The Luckiest
My parents would have celebrated
their 69th Wedding anniversary
TODAY
June 7, 2021
I believe they still do
because that
“till death do us part”
never really separates. . .
Tomorrow
June 8, 2021
Erin and I are celebrating our
35th Wedding Anniversary.
On June 8, 1986
the odds makers gave us a 35% chance of surviving our second marriage
which blended two families together
and it even went down a few percentage points when we had
o u r
two children within the first four years of our marriage.
T O D A Y:
the odds makers are ruling in our favor.
T H E Y
say
77% of couples married since 1990 reached their 10-year anniversaries according to recent census figures. It’s a supposed slight increase from 74% in the 80’s when divorces were at an all-time high.
N O W
Fifty-Five percent of all married couples have been married for at least 15 years, according to the Census report, while 35 percent have celebrated their 25th anniversaries and a special
S I X P E R C E N T
have made it to 50 years.
The Social Scientists are giving us all kinds of reasons why couples have not only leveled off the divorce train but actually turned it around:
Better Communication
More Equal Rights and Pay
Being Friends First
Compatibility
Financial Stability
Bradford Wilcox, the Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia tells us,
“Marriage is actually becoming more stable in America and divorce is becoming less common.”
He goes on to say,
“There is sort of more of a soul mate model of marriage today. . .50 years ago, this was one of the things you did when you became a young adult. You found a boyfriend or girlfriend and if you were pretty happy you’d go ahead and get married. . .Today the bar for marriage is much higher because people want a soul mate, not just a spouse. And a soul mate should be someone who is capable of providing you with emotional fulfillment, an intense relationship.”
What do I know after 35 years?
I know
that I can give the World, but Erin can bring me home.
I know
that we can show each other what we can never see by ourselves
I know
that she’s a beautiful blue ocean and I’m an extensive sandy shore
I know
that her Better
conquers my Worse
I know
that her Richness
obliterates my Poverty
I know
her Health
cures my Illnesses
I know
her Love is my never ending Christmas Day
I most ultimately know
I’m not
the strongest,
the bravest,
the smartest,
the brightest,
the thinnest,
the fastest,
the surest,
the most handsome
but no one can ever convince me
that I’m not the
l u c k i e s t
The one thing after all of these years
I absolutely-for-the-life-of-me-cannot-figure-out:
Why she said
Y E S
but I’m in heaven now and forevermore
because she
did. . .
Great relationships aren’t the ones that last a lifetime,
they’re ones that last a second past eternity.
I don’t know what the percentages of
T H A T
a r e. . .
but when you have it. . .
you no longer care;
It’s a Math
you can’t figure out
but adds up
a n y w a y
(and we just can’t stop smiling)
A (SELF) CARING CATALYST
FAMILIAR. . . ?
Sometimes some of the worst care
is the lack we give
O U R S E L V E S. . .
Being A Caring Catalyst to Others
begins with being
A Caring Catalyst
to Ourselves
IT IS THIS SIMPLE:
We do the best we can with what we know at the time. . .
It is VERY unloving to expect more;
We often were not given the knowledge
or the tools while we were young. . .
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Life is about learning.
Sometimes that learning can be painful.
Our challenge is that once we have learned the lesson
that we do not continue to repeat it. . .
For many of us, however,
we may have to go around the track a few times
before we are able to count it as a
m i l e. . .
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
There is no finish line
(PERIOD)
There is no competition
(PERIOD)
Self forgiveness is necessary on a daily basis
and SELF-LOVE even more needed
(MORE OFTEN)
in order to bring Compassion Care. . .
BEING A CARING CATALYST
means acknowledging
YOU DID THE BEST YOU COULD
. . .Now let it go
Can’t Stop FEELING
Sometimes I feel like a severe
S H A D O W
of myself;
I see myself clearly
I’m just not so sure if I
K N O W
what I’m seeing. . .
Have you felt like that
over this past year. . . ?
Does that statement help;
make things clearer
or does it just throw more mud in your eyes
and make them
more cloudy. . .
on the verge of literally
SHORT-CIRCUITING
MARKHAM HEID, a writer freelance writer wrote a piece six years ago
well before a year of battling a Pandemic
that talks about that
HAYWIRE FEELING
He tells us, when it comes to quelling stress, there are dozens of research-backed remedies. But the most effective treatment is always going to be the one you can stick with, says Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, director of the integrative medicine program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
“Managing stress is not like taking antibiotics, where you take all the medication and then you’re done and cured,” Cohen says. “It’s a lifelong process, so you have to find something you can engage in regularly and indefinitely.” Even if every stress expert agreed that daily meditation is the optimal form of treatment—and that kind of consensus isn’t farfetched—it wouldn’t do you much good unless you could muster the time and self-discipline to practice on a daily basis. For a lot of people, that’s never going to happen.
Fortunately, in terms of its therapeutic power, meditation may not require a quiet room—just a quiet mind. . .which means you have to ask the question,
DO I WANT SUCH A QUIET MIND?
When you’re stressed, your brain races from thought to thought, and these thoughts tend to be anxious and infused with dread, Cohen explains. Maybe you’re freaking out about a work deadline or a family member’s declining health. The most effective stress remedies disperse those rapid, worry-filled thoughts by focusing your mind on the present, not on some calamitous future, Cohen says.
Meditation is a popular stress remedy because it’s all about this kind of mind-anchoring. But if you’re able to achieve that calm, quiet state of mind while running or weeding your garden, then either will be beneficial. One 2015 study from Dutch researchers compared physical activity to mindfulness meditation, and found them to be equally effective at managing stress. Even washing dishes can alleviate anxiety—provided your attention is focused on the task at hand.
On the other hand, research shows your gym session or yoga practice won’t chill you out if your brain is preoccupied with work or family problems while you’re doing them. “They’re still healthy practices, they’re just not beneficial in terms of stress,” Cohen says.
So what’s your best course of action? First, check out mindfulness meditation. There’s compelling evidence to suggest it really is the antidote to our frenetic, future-focused way of life, Cohen says. Even if you don’t stick with it, the stuff you’ll learn can inform everything else you do—from preparing presentations at work to planting flowers in your garden.
At the same time, regular exercise bolsters your psychological health in myriad ways. “The ideal stress treatment would be to have both exercise and mindfulness on board in your life, not one or the other,” Cohen says.
A third weapon in your anti-stress arsenal is nature. Spending time on wooded trails or in other natural outdoor environments—any place away from man-built stuff like streets or buildings—appears to trigger an immediate drop in stress, says Tytti Pasanen of the University of Tampere in Finland. More research shows just looking at photos of nature is enough to mellow you out.
As you might expect, combining exercise with natural outdoor environments seems to be especially great at combating stress, Pasanen’s research shows. “I would advise regular physical activity in nature, on a weekly basis if possible,” she says.
Mindfulness practices. Exercise. Nature. Combine all three, and your stress won’t stand a chance.
SOMETIMES
I feel like a severe
s h a d o w
of myself
like my thoughts are not mine at all. . .
The Dalai Lama recently said,
“Scientists declare that it’s human nature to be compassionate. All living beings who experience feelings of pleasure and pain ultimately survive as a result of love and compassion. If we human beings help each other, serve each other, with compassion, we’ll be happy”
. . .I’m not sure if that’ll cause you to meditate
or even think much;
here’s hoping you can
F E E L
I T
A HALLELUJAH MEMORIAL DAY
Happy Memorial Day.
How can you assure it?
One simple word:
R E-M E M B E R I N G
–literally, by putting together the Pieces of your Life that have meaning and significance to you the Ones who make those Memories worth
RE-Membering–Putting back together. . .
The World will debate and argue, but the greatest forces in and out of this World
are our Memories and the Love that makes those memories
significant,
meaningful
and always worth
observing and celebrating. . .
It’s easy to
J U S T
Limit these Memories to our Veterans
or for those who have recently died,
but any day we truly
RE-Member,
that we actually put together those snipets of
Once Upon a Times
and ‘Remember When’s’
that put all those glorious colors to the
Tapestry of our Lives,
becomes a true Memorial Day.
Like any Holiday,
it really is celebrated most,
not so much on it’s Noted,
Dated Day,
but when fully Recognized,
Realized,
Revitalized
again and again and again with,
yes, that one single,
beautiful thing called
M e m o r y
So, on this Memorial Day,
R E – M E M B E R :
It’s not enough for us to just merely
Remember,
but for us to just simply Re-Member one thought,
one memory
past Eternity.
T r u l y:
Give thanks not so much for those who have died;
but for those who still fully live within us all. . .
F i v e W o r d s:
H a p p y M e m o r i a l D a y. . .
T H A N K
Y O U
IS HAPPINESS A PLACE?
Wouldn’t we all do it. . .
Book a Trip
Go to a Destination
Make a Pilgrimage
Escape on a Excursion
if we knew that the final landing spot was the
U N I V E R S E
of
HAPPINESS
W E L L . . . Which Values Make You Happy? It Might Depend on Where You Live
Different cultures value different things—and that matters for happiness. . .
KIRA M. NEWMAN a journalist with The Greater Good Magazine did a little exploring on this HAPPINESS PLACE issue with some interesting findings. . .
When a new psychology study comes out, its findings—gratitude makes people happy! meditating can boost your mood!—are often taken as truth about humanity as a whole. But in recent years, researchers have pointed out that much of psychology research involves participants who are WEIRD: Western, Educated, and from Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries.
Why is that a problem? Because it could be the case that the insights we’re learning about how to live happy, meaningful lives privilege one group’s experiences—and they may not be as useful to people from other cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds.
A new study surveyed people in five regions around the world to see if the factors that influenced their happiness might be different. The discrepancies that the researchers found lend support to concerns that our current knowledge about well-being isn’t as universal as we might think.
“The implicit claim in previous research that ‘one size fits all’ is probably incorrect,” write Bruce Headey and his colleagues at the DIW Berlin research institute.
Values and Happiness
The study was based on the World Values Survey, which surveyed hundreds of thousands of people around the world from 1999 to 2014. The researchers decided to focus on five regions:
- Western countries, including the United States, Britain, Australia, Spain, and others;
- Latin America;
- Asian-Confucian countries: Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan;
- Ex-communist countries: Russia and Eastern Europe; and
- Communist countries: China and Vietnam.
People in each region reported on their values and priorities in life—the things that matter most to them. These included:
- Traditional family values: The importance of family, as well as helping people who live nearby and caring for their needs.
- Friendship and leisure values: The importance of friendship and leisure.
- Materialistic values: Believing it’s important to be rich, successful, and recognized for your achievements.
- Political values: The importance of politics.
- Prosocial values: Believing it’s important to do something for the good of society and look after the environment.
- Religious values: The importance of religion and God.
The researchers then compared how people rated the importance of these values to how satisfied they felt about their lives.
The results suggest that some values may be more universally important to well-being than others. In all five regions, people who highly valued family, friendship/leisure, and prosociality tended to be more satisfied with life. But the results for materialism, politics, and religion were more complicated.
People with stronger political values were more satisfied with life in communist countries, where “good citizens are supposed to be politically active” within the limits laid out by the state, explains Headey. This was also true to a lesser extent in the West. Meanwhile, in ex-communist Russia and Eastern Europe, people who cared more deeply about politics were less happy. This may be due to the “disillusionment with politics” in those countries, after the fall of communism.
People who placed more importance on religion tended to be happier in the West, Latin America, and the Asian-Confucian countries. But they were less satisfied with life if they were living in the communist and ex-communist regions. As the researchers speculate, this may be because communist governments tend to be hostile to religion, and people in ex-communist countries may still be suffering the long-term effects of that.
Materialism, a value that’s long been assumed to make us unhappy, actually went hand in hand with life satisfaction in Eastern Europe. It was only in the wealthier Western and Asian-Confucian countries where materialists tended to be less satisfied. In Latin America and the Communist countries, being materialistic didn’t seem to matter to life satisfaction.
Happiness and Conformity
Why might some values be beneficial everywhere, whereas others only seem helpful in certain cultures?
The researchers suggest that people may be happier when their personal values align with the societal and governmental norms in their country. In other words, some values may benefit us not in and of themselves, but because they give us a sense of belonging and make it easier for us to navigate the world.
These findings also help make sense of a paradox in happiness research—the fact that some regions (like Latin America) are much happier than their gross domestic product (GDP) would predict, while others (like Eastern Europe) are much less happy.
Examining the values people hold could help explain these discrepancies. In Eastern Europe, for example, the researchers found that many people rated all the different values as relatively unimportant, a recipe for unhappiness. In Latin America, people’s strong family and religious ties seemed to bring them a great deal of satisfaction.
Though they aimed to be more inclusive, the researchers didn’t have access to surveys from sub-Saharan Africa or Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia—which means this picture of well-being is still incomplete. But it does point to a provocative idea: that the path to happiness isn’t the same everywhere, and what works for you may depend on the society and culture in which you live.
Amazing, stuff, huh. . .
To think that HAPPINESS IN A PLACE
instead of a PERSON
but then again, maybe that’s when it get’s really
W E I R D
(Western, Educated, and from Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries)
and it gets WEIRDER still
when Your WEIRD
gets my WEIRD
. . .now that’s some kind of
P L A C E
(to be)
DON’T LOVE
There really is a guarantee. . .
It’s a lockdown
full proof
100% sealed shut case:
You will never hurt
You will never shed a tear
You will never have a sense of loss
You will never have a moment of sadness
And to get this full proof guarantee
it’s not what you have to do
it’s what you don’t have to do
and it really is this simple:
DON’T LOVE
Don’t commit
Don’t become vulnerable enough to share your innermost self
Don’t share ever with any expectation of any reward or gift in return
Don’t be available accessible and accountable. . .
And the guarantee is yours
you will not hurt
you will not grieve
you will not experience a sense of loss
you’ll never have saltiest of tears
All of this
and probably a lot more
just because you
DON’T LOVE
Deal?
Wanna shake on it?
Get an ironclad triple your moneyback guarantee
Just
DON’T LOVE
And you too
ladies and gentlemen
can have an
UNBREAKABLE HEART
It may not beat the same
but it won’t be broken,
either. . .
For the HEALTH of IT
Spending Time With Friends Is One of the Best Things You Can Do for Your Health
TRUE or FALSE
Jamie Ducharme from TIME MAGAZINE asked that question and took to finding out the TRUE and the FALSE of it all. . .
When someone sets out to improve their health, they usually take a familiar path: starting a healthy diet, adopting a new workout regimen, getting better sleep, drinking more water. Each of these behaviors is important, of course, but they all focus on physical health—and a growing body of research suggests that social health is just as, if not more, important to overall well-being.
One 2019 study published in the journal PLOS ONE, for example, found that the strength of a person’s social circle—as measured by inbound and outbound cell phone activity—was a better predictor of self-reported stress, happiness and well-being levels than fitness tracker data on physical activity, heart rate and sleep. That finding suggests that the “quantified self” portrayed by endless amounts of health data doesn’t tell the whole story, says study co-author Nitesh Chawla, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame.
“There’s also a qualified self, which is who I am, what are my activities, my social network, and all of these aspects that are not reflected in any of these measurements,” Chawla says. “My lifestyle, my enjoyment, my social network—all of those are strong determinants of my well-being.”
Chawla’s theory is supported by plenty of prior research. Studies have shown that social support—whether it comes from friends, family members or a spouse—is strongly associated with better mental and physical health. A robust social life, these studies suggest, can lower stress levels; improve mood; encourage positive health behaviors and discourage damaging ones; boost cardiovascular health; improve illness recovery rates; and aid virtually everything in between. Research has even shown that a social component can boost the effects of already-healthy behaviors such as exercise.
Social isolation, meanwhile, is linked to higher rates of chronic diseases and mental health conditions, and may even catalyze cellular-level changes that promote chronic inflammation and suppress immunity. The detrimental health effects of loneliness have been likened to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s a significant problem, especially since loneliness is emerging as a public health epidemic in the U.S. According to recent surveys, almost half of Americans, including large numbers of the country’s youngest and oldest adults, are lonely.
A 2019 study conducted by health insurer Cigna and published in the American Journal of Health Promotion set out to determine what’s driving those high rates of loneliness. Unsurprisingly, it found that social media, when used so much that it infringes on face-to-face quality time, was tied to greater loneliness, while having meaningful in-person interactions, reporting high levels of social support and being in a committed relationship were associated with less loneliness. Gender and income didn’t seem to have a strong effect, but loneliness tended to decrease with age, perhaps because of the wisdom and perspective afforded by years of life lived, says Dr. Stuart Lustig, one of the report’s authors and Cigna’s national medical executive for behavioral health.
Lustig says the report underscores the importance of carving out time for family and friends, especially since loneliness was inversely related to self-reported health and well-being. Reviving a dormant social life may be best and most easily done by finding partners for enjoyable activities like exercising, volunteering, or sharing a meal, he says.
“Real, face-to-face time with people [is important], and the activity part of it makes it fun and enjoyable and gives people an excuse to get together,” Lustig says.
Lustig emphasizes that social media should be used judiciously and strategically, and not as a replacement for in-person relationships. Instead, he says, we should use technology “to seek out meaningful connections and people that you are going to be able to keep in your social sphere. It’s easy enough to find groups such as Meetups, or to find places to go where you’ll find folks doing what you want to do.” That advice is particularly important for young people, he says, for whom heavy social media use is common.
Finally, Lustig stresses that even small social changes can have a large impact. Striking up post-meeting conversations with co-workers, or even engaging inmicro-interactions with strangers, can make your social life feel more rewarding.
“There’s an opportunity to grow those kinds of quick exchanges into conversations and into more meaningful friendships over time,” Lustig says. “People should take those opportunities wherever they possibly can, because all of us, innately, are wired from birth to connect”—and because doing so may pay dividends for your health.
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