People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner, and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely.
Interpretation
Isolation negatively impacts happiness and health, leading to a shorter life.
This quote by Robert J. Waldinger emphasizes the detrimental effects of loneliness on individuals, suggesting that a lack of social connections can result in decreased happiness, declining health, impaired cognitive functioning, and ultimately a shorter lifespan. It highlights the importance of fostering relationships and maintaining social ties for a healthier, more fulfilling life.
In practice
In a speech about mental health awareness, one might quote Waldinger to stress the importance of community.
Being human means there's a wall-builder in each of us. Our minds naturally divide the world into me and not-me, us and them. For thousands of years, our sages have taught that we're all one, yet we still divide wherever we look.
It's the quality of your relationships that matters.
The good life is built with good relationships.
It's not just the number of friends you have, and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship. It's the quality of your close relationships that matters.
It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected.
Most of what we know about human life we know from asking people to remember the past, and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life, and sometimes memory is downright creative.
Helping others is the way we help ourselves.
One never can know the whys and the wherefores of one's passional changes.
There are a hundred places where I fear To go, --so with his memory they brim! And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, so remembering him!
With soldiers, their wives are so fundamental in their relationships, and yet there's this kind of other war happening back in the States, where wives of soldiers don't quite understand what their husbands have been through, because their husbands won't really talk about it, and that's really the hidden war.
For "full" emotional communication, one person needs to allow his state of mind to be influenced by that of the other.
I've got to stop getting obsessed with human beings and fall in love with a chair. Chairs have everything human beings have to offer, and less, which is obviously what I need. Less emotional feedback, less warmth, less approval, less patience and less response. The less the merrier. Chairs it is. I must furnish my heart with feelings for furniture.
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