I just watched a TED talk on YouTube about happiness. It was a review of the longest study on people’s well being in history, going on 75 years at this point. They followed the same 724 men from teenage years till death. Obviously, they had different directors of the study over the years in order to keep the study going. There are now only a few left alive in the study.
They asked these men the same questions every couple of years over the course of the study and came to some interesting findings. The men who were the healthiest and happiest octogenarians were those that had quality, deep relationships with others. The speaker introduced the talk by saying how a recent survey had asked millennials what was important to them. The top three answers they gave were money, fame and success in their careers.
This is nothing new of course. We see the importance of community talked about all through the New Testament in particular. Sometimes it takes modern science a while to catch up with timeless Biblical truths.
Loneliness pervades Western culture. I can only speak from an American perspective but I know depression rates soar in other Western countries as well like New Zealand and Japan. We are more connected than ever before digitally but simultaneously are more disconnected to actual human beings.
How can we start treating our relationships as important as this study shows? How can we purposely carve out time for the relationships that are most important to us? I believe a simple place to start would be to cut out some of our media diet. I am as guilty as the next guy of being on my smart phone way too much in any given day. There’s got to be a balance in our lives. There’s nothing inherently wrong with whatever social network you prefer. Like anything else we deal with on a daily basis though, it can easily become an idol.
May God help us all lay down our idols of social networks and media in general and spend more time with those we love in person.
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