Live Long, Die Short (22 page)

The most salubrious effects of social connection are seen when we have at least a small number of very close friends, people we would have no reluctance to call at 3:00 a.m. if necessary. Unfortunately, we seem to be going in the opposite direction from this more beneficial social culture. According to a study in the
American Sociological Review
, Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships since at least 1985. The study states that 25 percent of Americans have no close confidants and that the average total number of confidants per person has dropped from four to two.
¹⁴

Some of the beneficial effects of social interaction require touching, as with babies. The financial and emotional support systems seen in Roseto might be possible from a distance, but the frequent meetings, club environments, and sharing of narrated stories might not be. So, it would seem that our modern technologies for social networking have wider reach, the potential to bring people together physically, and the ability to “keep in touch.” However, as with other beneficial effects based in our evolutionary biology, it would seem the face-to-face, rubbing elbows–type social interaction of our ancestors is most likely more associated with the powerful health benefits of social engagement.

My good friend Erich, who lives in Bavaria, believes it is better to communicate in person and that, if you cannot, then sending letters is the best substitute. He is not alone, but this cadre of traditional communicators is on the wane. Will we, like the new generation in Roseto, begin to lose the health effects of social connection? More studies will be necessary to determine the health value of our social networking technologies. In her provocative book,
Alone Together
, Sherry Turkle, professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT, tells of the “gathering clouds” presented by technology in relation to our absolutely critical social relations: “On social networks, people are reduced to their profiles. On our mobile devices, we often talk to each other on the move and with little disposable time—so little, in fact, that we communicate in a new language of abbreviations in which letters stand for words and emotions for feelings. We don’t ask the open ended ‘How are you?’ Instead we ask the more limited ‘Where are you?’ and ‘What’s up?’ These are good questions for getting someone’s
location and making a simple plan. They are not good for opening a dialogue about complexity of feeling. We are increasingly connected to each other but oddly more alone.”
¹⁵

She is ninety years old, is a caretaker for her progressively more forgetful husband, has been widowed twice, and is a recent cancer survivor. Yet Ethel, a former Ms. New York Senior America, continues to reach out to people. She has skills: performing, singing, dancing, even comedic skills; writing and teaching skills; and people skills. She uses all these to stay engaged, to give meaning and purpose to her life, and to bring happiness to those around her.

Ethel lives in a Masterpiece Living retirement community in South Florida. Despite her recent challenges, she has cajoled, coached, and motivated her neighbors, most of whom have never performed in any capacity, to step out of their isolation and reluctance—and step high—in a Broadway-style show that Ethel directs. Ethel has transformed her amateur performers; has made them proud of themselves; has made them more engaged in life, some more than when they were decades younger. She has created a social network of performers and audience members so powerful that the entire community has been transformed into a vital and flourishing place to continue to grow.

Still writing a column for a New York publication targeted to older adults, and still involved with the Ms. New York Senior America pageant that she headed for decades, Ethel is tireless. She has performed at the White House, had her own radio show, taught exercise for decades, written an autobiography, and has basically swallowed life whole. And even as we speak together, she breaks into an original song about her community and about Masterpiece Living. To the tune of “Oklahoma”:

La Posada we will laugh and sing and even dance.
And who knows what may come if you meet someone.
There may even be a new romance.
We’re so happy that we are all here.
Let’s stand up and give a loud, lusty, cheer.

Ethel remains a brilliant force of vitality and resilience, still looking glamorous and younger than her years, but mostly she is out on the playing field of life. Always with others, connected by song, and dance, and comedy. Always helping others to reach beyond their comfort zone and marvel at the result. Ethel is a life coach, a meteoric blaze of benevolent light for all who meet her. She knows the secret of social connection and shares that secret with everyone she meets. She could easily have chosen to wallow in her life’s turn of events, but instead she chose life. Ernest Hemingway wrote in
A Farewell to Arms
, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” Ethel is people strong.

Masterpiece Living Pearls for Staying Connected

1. We’re back in the easy chair again, thinking. How many people do you see in a day? A week? Do you know anyone that you could call at 3:00 a.m. for help? Are there people in your life who would be comfortable calling you at 3:00 a.m.? Relative to your association with other people, how do you want the rest of your life to be? Who do you want in it? Do you welcome people into your life or keep them at a distance? These questions, like the Lifestyle Inventory you took in
   chapter 4
   , provide a snapshot of where you are relative to where you want to be.
   
2. Let’s get more specific. Who stimulates and energizes you? Who makes you feel better about yourself and the world? Who makes you feel like you could do almost anything? Who was meaningful in your life and is now absent?
   

   These are the people you want to nurture. Like plants, friendships need attention, nourishment, and effort to keep them from fading from your life, and to allow them to grow. Yes, social connections require work, and who has the time, right? You do. It’s a matter of priorities. We cannot expect that friends will be there when we finally have the time or inclination to connect again if we don’t nourish them, if we are not the kind of person they prefer to be with. How to nourish? It’s simply a matter of communicating with them, of letting them know they are important in your life. Whatever it takes.
   

3. Have you decided that there are too few people in your life? How can you grow the number of people with whom you are connected in some way? Like dating, getting to know people can take a lot of work, and sometimes you find in the end that you have little in common. If
   this happens repeatedly, it is easy to become disillusioned and to give up trying altogether. So go back to question #1 and think about what you want your life to be in this next phase. What sort of things do you want to be doing? Well, just like in Tip One, these are the things you should be doing.
   Do the things you love; the people will follow.
   And the people who do will most likely be people with whom you have a lot in common. If you enjoy learning, take a class. Bicycling? Get on that bike, and maybe join a bicycling club. Writing? Find a writer’s group. Gardening? You get it, right?
   
4. Social networking resources can help you locate and connect with significant people who have disappeared from your life. More than likely they will be very happy to hear from you and want to meet. What do you have to lose?
   
5. What about people who drain you? Who make you feel bad about yourself? Who are not happy when you have a success or other positive event in your life? We are responsible for our internal environment, and if that’s negative, for whatever reason, we will be negative and we will be raising our risk for disease. So, it’s time to purge those negative elements. It doesn’t have to be a big scene. No drama, only stop connecting with them, or if necessary, respectfully tell them how you feel and that you want to move on. Wish them luck. You may even want to give them a rain check for when they become more positive, but more than likely that will only delay the inevitable. Make it a clean break and make room for the new people who will nourish you and whom you will nourish in return. When I left the military, I reached out to neighbors and coworkers in my new town. This town was, however, a place that people rarely left and so the lives of its inhabitants were filled with family and friends they had gone to kindergarten with. This was fine for them, but it left them no room, in their minds, for new friends—bad for me. So clean out your social closet and make the room. It will be an adventure well worth the effort.
   

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
—ARISTOTLE

M
ost think that one day, perhaps when we least expect it, fate comes knocking on our door and there it is: cancer, or heart disease, or dementia, or whatever else we fear most. Although such a scenario can be terrifying, in some ways it’s comforting. Why? Because if that is indeed how we get sick, then there’s not much we can do about it, is there? It’s fate. We’re going to get it or we’re not. Th is is, in fact, the rationale many use to justify dangerous behavior, like smoking or overeating. “You’ve got to die of something, right?” or “Hey, I’ll get it or I won’t, I’m not going to worry about it.” Or the famous “I know a guy who lived to be a hundred …”

Of course, when we were ignorant of the mechanisms and causes of disease, these arguments held some water. Now, however, we know that how we age, and therefore what diseases knock on our door, is dependent primarily on our lifestyle. In fact, 50 percent to 75 percent of US cancer deaths are caused by three harmful behaviors: tobacco use, lack of exercise, and poor diet.
¹
Even higher percentages of coronary heart disease and stroke are considered to be preventable with lifestyle and preventive measures. The
slowing of the progression of dementia, the delay of its onset, and perhaps even prevention of it are beginning to look possible (see
Tip Three
). Yes, the argument that fate will have its way and that we are totally helpless is beginning to show some serious leaks.

Each of us has risks for disease or injury. These risks arise from our life experiences, lifestyle choices, and, to a lesser extent, genes. I believe many risks arise when we live a lifestyle far removed from our core needs. What is becoming clearer with recent research is that these risks are, for the most part, manageable. Actually, better than manageable—we can reduce or even eliminate many risks altogether.

We are conditioned, perhaps by our youthful way of learning, or by the piecemeal way that research on health is revealed to us, to think of lifestyle and health in linear terms—that is, if I do this, this will happen. If I exercise regularly, I will lose weight, look better, get fit, and decrease the chances of a heart attack. If I stop smoking, I’ll reduce my chances of lung cancer. If I get regular checkups, I’ll be less likely to get cancer. If I eat right, I’ll lose weight and not get diabetes or have a stroke or heart attack. If I do crossword puzzles, I’ll keep my brain sharp. Our approach to lifestyle is piecemeal, fractionated like our medical approach to disease, and we think of skin ailments, heart ailments, neurological diseases, or gastrointestinal diseases, not a sick
person
. And even more common reasons for making lifestyle changes, such as increasing physical activity, frequently have little to do with avoiding disease and more to do with looking better.

When we are younger, we frequently attempt to adopt healthier lifestyles for non-health reasons. Vanity is perhaps the major driver of physical activity in the young. Being more attractive, looking better at that wedding or on the beach, is a strong motivator. Competitive advantage in sports or bragging-rights accomplishments are very common in males, and becoming more so in women.