Hey friend!
Welcome to 52 Friends. I’m Miriam :) and I think that we need to make friendships the center of our personal and professional lives. I made it my goal to connect or reconnect with one new friend a week for 52 weeks.
I started this project after I suffered from a long period of loneliness and was disheartened to learn that there is a stigma that surrounds it—one of being unlikeable or lacking the ability to make or maintain relationships. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
It can be difficult to make friends as an adult, especially as the number of shared experiences like summer camp or living in dorms beings to diminish. Almost everyone is loveable but it is a mutual vulnerability (i.e. emotions and experiences) that connects people—knowledge sharing doesn’t.
Being lonely can manifest itself in a number of ways like anger, depression, impulsive behavior, impaired judgment, or bad sleep, and can lead to things like addiction.
In Canada, where I live, a 2021 social survey titled Loneliness in Canada revealed that more than one in ten people are always or often lonely. 15 percent of people between the ages of 25 and 34 fell into the often or always lonely category and 45 percent of those people reported that their mental health was either fair or poor.
Loneliness can have profound consequences on our health. A research study that I’ve linked here found that a lack of human connection can be more harmful to our health than obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure while strong social connectivity leads to a 50 percent increased chance of longevity as social connectivity actually strengthens our immune system.
In the workplace, The Institute of Leadership and Management found that relationships with colleagues are considered to be one of the most important factors in determining job satisfaction by 77% of respondents. Recent Gallup data showed that having a best friend at work is essential to emotional and social support and is also tied to key business outcomes.
Brene Brown who is a professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work specializes in social connection. In an interview, she said, “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irresistible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.”
The state of loneliness is inevitability complex. Perfectionism can drive loneliness, living inauthentically, or not having people to whom we can speak to in a relational manner. North America does objectively have a culture of individualism where we take pride in striving toward goals alone but that rationale could be holding us back.
A course called The Science of Well-Being by Dr. Laurie R Santos at Yale University states that the perfect body, money, or even true love will not bring you happiness but one of the things that will is social connection. Happy people spend more time with others. They stop their coworker to ask about their day or they make conversations with a neighbor—my mom stops everyone to ask about their dog.
52 Friends’ mission is to end the loneliness stigma and educate on the benefits of social connectivity. We’re able to do this by documenting cool stories and creating opportunities for candid conversations.
If you’d like to be better friends, please feel free to contact me at miriamsamdur@gmail.com
~ Miriam
Thinking of reaching out to an old friend?
Do it! The American Psychology Association found that receiving a message from an old friend can lead to feelings of surprise and appreciation.
We’ve thought of some non-awkward ways to reconnect.
Send a quick text and ask to get coffee
Invite them to an event
Slide into their DMs
Get together with mutual friends
Share a memory
“Grown-ups love figures. When you describe a new friend to them, they never ask you about the important things. They never say 'What's his voice like? What are his favorite games? Does he collect butterflies?' Instead, they demand 'How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much does his father earn? Only then do they feel like they know him."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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