Seniors building relationships at a Lions’ barbeque last Wednesday.
Westport Lions Roar
By Lion Bob Reddick
If you want to extend your life, then improve your connections with people. It is a proven fact that if you want to live long or extend your life, you need to develop or have connections with other people.
Of course, without the right genetic makeup, it doesn’t matter what you do, but science has proven that one can extend one’s life significantly by developing good relationships.
In Marta Zaraska’s book, Growing Young, How Friendship, Optimism, and Kindness Can Help You Live to 100, she states that diet and exercise are important factors to extend your life, but researchers are finding that friendships, purpose in life, empathy and kindness are more powerful than diet and exercise. Zaraska concludes that connection to people is the most powerful contributor to longevity. In a meta-analysis, scientists have found that exercise decreases our risk of death by 23 to 30%, diet up to 20.4% and a large social network by 45%.
In Marisa G. Franco’s book, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Make and Keep Friends, she writes that social interactions started to decline with the use of television in the 1950s. Up to that time, most social interactions were outside the home and face-to-face. Now, with the wide use of smartphones and social media, those interactions are increasingly a private affair. Franco and Marta both agree that social connections impact how long we live and the quality of life more than traditional predictors like diet and exercise. “The lack of social connections might not kill us right now,” says Marisa Franco, but over time it’s slowly killing us if we are lonely and more isolated.”
One of the ways to build connections is to join a club or organization. Westport is blessed with numerous organizations that can help people develop connections with like-minded people.
The Westport Lions Club offers you a wide variety of activities that you can choose when and how you want to participate. Whether you like to organize or lead, or prefer to take on a supportive role, the club can accommodate you. You can always start a new service project if the club does not offer an activity that you are passionate about. Recent additions to the club’s service activities are Pitch-In, community gardens, a drawing contest for Canada Day, and the resurrection of WestFest. If the start-up cost is not too much and the project meets our motto, “To Serve,” the club would seriously consider it.
True, making connections with people takes effort, time, and commitment and may initially cause a little social anxiety, but everything worthwhile in life takes those things.
If you want to live a long and happy life, chat with your neighbours, keep moving, discover new hobbies, eat well, and most importantly build connections with new and old friends.
Westport Lions Club 