“Friendship helps our souls grow.” Michel de Montaigne
I worked for a small, local computer consulting firm right after I graduated from college in the early 90’s. Nestled in the suburb right next to Microsoft, it was growing fast – doubling every year. Most of the new employees were my age and it was a fun working environment in which it was easy to make new friends.
So when I recently heard a Ten Percent Happier podcast with psychologist and professor at the University of Maryland, Dr. Marisa G. Franco who has recently written a book called Platonic quote the statistic that we typically have the most friends at age 25 when we are establishing our identity, it matched with my experience.
Dr. Franco had a lot of interesting stats about friendships these days like four times as many people report having no friends as compared to the early 90’s and 2012, the year of the introduction of the smart phone, correlates with a rise in loneliness. One of the interesting things she added about smart phones and social media is that when we use them to connect with people (aka comment and message) and not just lurk, they can be useful tools in supporting friendships.
She also talked about how friends help us grow. Alone, we have an instinct to be on the lookout for danger that can be calmed when we cultivate good connections:
“Healthy and quality connections and it can ground us and center us more, our souls grow because it gives us the space to figure out who we are because we’re not in that active state of threat anymore. Friendship, good quality friendship, good quality connection it regulates us, it helps us feel less activated all the time, less reactive all the time.”
Dr. Marisa G. Franco
I feel so blessed to be part of this blogging community where it has felt easy to create quality connections with other delightful, thoughtful, and interesting people. Establishing friendships with other parents in this phase of life of having young kids has felt much harder by contrast. Dr. Franco’s research on how attachment theory applies to friendships and making new friends is the topic of my Wise & Shine post for today: The Art and Science of Making New Friends
(featured photo from Pexels)
Surprised By Joy 