Show of hands, where are the Friends or Seinfeld junkies? You know every re-run. You can quote all the best lines. (“Pivot!”) But do you know what made those shows work?
Of course, there was brilliant writing and comedic timing. And the characters helped us recognize our own personality traits and mental health struggles in a non-threatening way. (One college professor even taught a class at Rutgers he dubbed Psy-feld, in which students watched episodes of Seinfeld and discussed the characters’ behavioral health in class. How great is that?)
But these shows had one main ingredient that made them go. Friendship.
Many of us would love the barge-through-the-front-door friendships portrayed in these sitcoms. But if we don’t yet have that, we’re not alone. The U.S. Surgeon General last year issued an advisory about the devastating health consequences of isolation. Calling loneliness an epidemic, the report found that even before COVID-19, about half of U.S. adults experienced measurable levels of loneliness.
This is not a “minor” issue. The health toll of disconnection is worse than smoking! For example, lonely people have a 50% increased risk of dementia, 60% increased risk of premature death, and a substantial spike in mental health challenges such as depression and anxiety.
The Rx is Relationships
Bottom line: We need friends. It’s a topic I dedicated entire devotions to in my book Find Rest. We are created in such a way that there is no way to live a restful and peaceful life without at least some sort of rich connection.
And yet, in adulthood, finding true friends can be so doggone tricky, can’t it? Maybe you’ve been burned by a close friend and it’s hard to risk building trust with someone new. Maybe you your busy schedule complicates getting time together. Or maybe you’re quirky and finding friends who get you is just … hard.
We need to purposefully get down to the business of building the close friendships we want –whether they are the barge-through-the-front-door friends or the “what are you doing three weeks from Sunday?” friends. Here are five tips (some of which might be surprising) on how to do just that.
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