{"id":2159,"date":"2008-11-09T18:20:42","date_gmt":"2008-11-09T23:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=2159"},"modified":"2008-11-09T21:49:53","modified_gmt":"2008-11-10T02:49:53","slug":"to-whom-it-may-concern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/2159","title":{"rendered":"To Whom It May Concern…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…or not.<\/p>\n

\n

In Loneliness<\/em><\/a>, the psychologist John T Cacioppo and the science writer William Patrick report on the situation in the United States: Between 1985 and 2004, the number of Americans who said they had no close confidants tripled. Single-parent households are on the rise, and the US Census estimates that 30 percent more Americans will live alone in 2010 than did so in 1980. As the American way of life spreads around the world, no doubt loneliness is being exported with it.<\/p>\n

People do like to be alone sometimes. But no one likes to feel lonely – to feel that they are alone against their will, or that the social contacts they do have are without deeper meaning. According to Cacioppo and Patrick the feeling of loneliness is the least of it. They present scientific evidence suggesting that loneliness seriously burdens human health. By middle age, the lonely are less likely to exercise and more likely to eat a high-fat diet, and they report experiencing a greater number of stressful events. Loneliness correlates with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. During a four-year study, lonely senior citizens were more likely to end up in nursing homes; during a nine-year study, people with fewer social ties were two to three times more likely to die<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

To explain why loneliness hurts so bad, Cacioppo and Patrick turn to evolutionary psychology…<\/p>\n

Caleb Crain, Lonely together<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Emphasis mine…)  A chance comes along for you to do something good, maybe something wonderful for a friend.  Perhaps nothing will come of it.  The odds are poor at best.  But it’s a chance.  It has dropped in your lap.  You need only lift your little finger to give this chance to your friend.<\/p>\n

But perhaps lifting your little finger is too much trouble.  If instead, you allow this chance to float away on the wind, like a dead autumn leaf, don’t tell yourself afterward that it wasn’t really of much importance.  Don’t just shrug and think that, after all, probably nothing would have come of it.  That isn’t the point.  …scientific evidence suggesting that loneliness seriously burdens human health. By middle age, the lonely are less likely to exercise and more likely to eat a high-fat diet, and they report experiencing a greater number of stressful events. Loneliness correlates with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. During a four-year study, lonely senior citizens were more likely to end up in nursing homes; during a nine-year study, people with fewer social ties were two to three times more likely to die….  <\/em>Is this what decent people allow to happen to the ones they care about?  Of course not. <\/p>\n

So don’t tell yourself that it was nothing.  Don’t reassure yourself that the odds were poor anyway.  Stop making excuses.  Look yourself in the mirror, and fess up to the fact that if you care so little about this person, that you’d allow even a billion to one chance they’d find happiness to fly off into the night without so much as a shrug, they were never really someone you cared all that much about to begin with. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…or not. In Loneliness, the psychologist John T Cacioppo and the science writer William Patrick report on the situation in the United States: Between 1985 and 2004, the number of Americans who said they had no close confidants tripled. Single-parent households are on the rise, and the US Census estimates that 30 percent more Americans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[77],"class_list":["post-2159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-the-dumpsville-chronicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}