Site Presented By
Friday, Jul 10, 2009
New science says being lonely speeds aging. Old philosophy says the holiday blues are a signal to examine and change your life.
By Katharine Mieszkowski
Read more: Books, Environment, Science, Neurology, Katharine Mieszkowski, Environment & Science
Dec. 22, 2008 | In "Four Christmases," the hit holiday movie, Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn star as a happy, young San Francisco couple, Kate and Brad, who navigate the merry minefield of four Christmas visits to their respective parents' homes in one single day.
Amid the gags about puking infants and do-it-yourself satellite-dish installations, "Four Christmases" mocks the storied holiday rituals designed to bring us together in cozy celebration. One by one the traditions -- sometimes literally -- go down in flames. The gift exchanges by the Christmas tree, the special holiday food and the pageantry of the Christmas story acted out at church -- with Kate drafted into the role of the Virgin Mary and Brad as Joseph -- fail to cement fractured family ties.
Even the old ploy of playing board games to diffuse family tensions and suppress awkward conversation proves hopeless. As the frantic couple comically race from one Christmas celebration to the next, Kate complains to Brad: "I feel like we're not really connecting. I feel like you're not really present." The seasonal frenzy is so fraught that at one point Brad says woodenly to Kate: "I've shut down. I'm shutting down."
"Four Christmases" invites us to laugh at how the holidays can make us feel lonely and isolated, even when we're surrounded by our loved ones and family members. It is small wonder this comedy is a hit -- despite some real groaner gags -- as the holidays cause an awful lot of people to feel lonely in a crowd.
Our profound need to feel connected is hardly a modern discovery. "No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world," Aristotle wrote. Yet science is now bringing us closer to the biological roots of loneliness, revealing how it affects our mental and physical health. At the same time, philosophers have not stopped looking into the dark heart of loneliness, challenging us to face its existential roots. In very different ways, two recent books on loneliness argue that feeling chronically alone is a powerful sign to examine and strive to change our lives. And now is the season to start.
"The holidays can put us into such a harried state that we're not actually able to connect with friends and family, to relax and enjoy their company," says John Cacioppo, a neuroscientist and psychologist at the University of Chicago, and co-author of "Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection."
While most of us can successfully weather a few hours -- or days -- of the holiday blues, some 20 percent of people -- roughly 60 million Americans -- feel sufficiently socially isolated for it to be a major source of unhappiness in their lives. In fact, many lonely people are surrounded by friends and family, yet don't feel close to any of them. Such intimate isolation -- the feeling that no one understands who you are -- appears to be on the rise. A study by sociologists at Duke University and the University of Arizona found that between 1985 and 2004 the average number of friends with whom Americans felt they could "discuss important matters" had dropped from three to two. The number who said they had no one with whom they could discuss important matters more than doubled to nearly 25 percent.
Cacioppo, an evolutionary psychologist who has studied social connection for 30 years, stresses that chronic loneliness has well-documented health effects. For decades, scientists have known that social isolation impacts our health in ways comparable to the effects of high blood pressure, lack of exercise, obesity and smoking. In short, being lonely is bad for you. But what Cacioppo and his colleagues have found is that it's not literally being alone, but the subjective experience known as loneliness that causes harm.
"Whether you're at home with your family, working in an office crowded with bright and attractive young people, touring Disneyland, or sitting alone in a fleabag hotel on the wrong side of town, chronic feelings of loneliness can drive a cascade of physiological events that actually accelerates the aging process," he writes.
While brief periods of loneliness, such as your first semester away at college, or following the death of your spouse, doesn't appear to cause grave harm, chronic loneliness does. The long-term lonely are likely to suffer more diseases at an earlier age, and die younger than those who feel close to others. By middle age, the lonely drink more alcohol, eat more fat and exercise less than their more social fellows. The experience of feeling lonely -- whether or not you're surrounded by family, friends and co-workers -- impacts stress hormones, immune function and heart health. Loneliness can even be measured on the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a test that you can take yourself here.
Next page: Facebook is no substitute for face-to-face contact
Feeling lonely?
Listen to interviews with 
