The favour you think is not a favour
....to me, I cherish am like mad.
For you to take your time out to help me through a phase of chokehold.
You don turn G be that.
God bless you and your generation yet to comeπ€
The US Surgeon General put an actual number on loneliness. Being chronically disconnected carries a mortality impact similar to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and a greater one than obesity or physical inactivity.
The research is sobering. Chronic loneliness raises the risk of early death by 26 to 29 percent, and is linked to higher rates of heart disease, stroke, dementia, depression, and anxiety. In 2023 the Surgeon General declared it a genuine public health epidemic, on the same shelf as tobacco and addiction.
What makes it quietly urgent is where the modern world is heading. We optimized for convenience and independence, food delivered, work remote, entertainment solo, and accidentally engineered many small daily contacts out of life. The neighbour, the colleague, the long call, the crowded family compound. Efficiency removed friction, and some of that friction was human connection.
There is a specific warning here for the ambitious and the newly relocated. People who move abroad for opportunity often trade a dense web of relationships for a bigger salary and a quieter apartment. The paycheck shows up on the statement. The cost of the missing web does not, until years later.
Relationships are not a reward you collect after building the career. On the evidence, they are part of the health infrastructure that lets you live long enough to enjoy it.