Unit 26

Friends Bring Happiness

We sit around the rough wooden table in the summer cabin for a class reunion. About 15 men and women who have one thing in common: we all went to elementary school together. A classmate sums it up. "What's most important in life is friendship. I don't know what I'd do without my friends." The room full of gray hair applauds in agreement.

Decades of research have documented that friendship is good for your health. People with friends have lower death rates. They recover faster from illness. Just why friendship is a healing force is the focus of much research. As scientists try to unravel the DNA code book of life, I look around the table at my classmates.

There are old memories of the gray-haired music teacher. There are turning points of weddings, births, funerals. Laughter and gossip. Crises of illness, despair, and loss. At its most basic level, friendship is a human connection that involve affection and intimacy. In the inner circle, there is a continual sharing of the most important details of your life. Whom do you confide in on a regular basis? Whom can you call upon if you need help? Whom do you call if you want celebrate? The inner circle today may include spouses, lovers, college roommates and cousins, children and grandchildren, colleagues, and children of friends.

There are lots of ways to get love and intimacy. You don't have to be married. It doesn't matter whether it's friends or relatives. You have to rely on somebody for emotional support.

Some of us are Marco Polo types who left the area long ago. A large percentage stayed, raising their children as we were raised along well-worn paths. Yet the themes of being tested and finding a haven of loving friendship are the same. Since nursery school, each of us has spread out and created new networks. It's as though we were born into a certain biological family and have ended up with a diverse web of kinship.

Doctors warn us a lack of friends can be hazardous to health. Isolation and alienation are risk factors for diseases. Research with monkeys shows that adult females housed alone are twice as likely to develop diseases of arteries as animals that live in small groups. In a study of patients hospitalized for heart attacks, 38 percent of those without social support network died in the hospital, compared with 11 percent of those who had support.

The experience of being loved, cherished, esteemed and cared for protects people from disease. It also makes life worthwhile.

Yet building an inner circle of intimates takes work, especially as people age and lose old friends. If only drug companies could bottle friendship, and doctors prescribe it.

Making -- and keeping -- friends is the ultimate task in self-care. It's up to us to maintain connections -- to make the phone call, send the mail, exchange the photos. That's why we started to plan for next year's reunion.