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.
Interpretation
Social connections lead to greater happiness and health.
This quote emphasizes the importance of social connections, suggesting that those who maintain strong ties to family, friends, and their community experience greater happiness, better physical health, and increased longevity compared to those who are more isolated. It highlights the idea that our relationships significantly impact our overall well-being and life satisfaction.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a family reunion to highlight the importance of staying connected.
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.
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.
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.
The intuitive connection children feel with animals can be a tremendous source of joy. The unconditional love received from pets, and the lack of artifice in the relationship, contrast sharply with the much trickier dealings with members of their own species.
The act of forgiveness takes place in our own mind. It really has nothing to do with the other person.
I must quit marrying men who feel inferior to me. Somewhere there must be a man who could be my husband and not feel inferior.
Dammit Sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't always be living for pleasure!
It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.
Well, I think when we can turn to the person sitting next to us and really see them with kindness and see ourselves reflected back - when there's some dignity and compassion traveling back and forth.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.