And I still need a friend.

What are friends to you?

Some say friends are those who help you through hard times; some say friends are those who you share your happiness and sorrows with; and some say friends are those who make us who we are.

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Some people say friends come and go, some people say good friends worth the effort to stay connect.

Some people say friends aren't forever, some people say friends stay forever because we want to.

Some people say friends won't completely understand us, some people say friends are only true when you understand and let understood.

Some people say friends who let go should be let gone, some people say friends drifted apart because they are both fear of saying "I miss you, please come back".

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Some people say friends are nothing but a shadow, some people say friends are only for those who know how to open the heart.

Some people say they don't need friends, some people say that's a lie, because we all need friends.

And yes I do agree, all of us need friends. Be it a friend who stays nearby, a net friend, a penpal, or even an imaginary friend.

We make friends to share, to understand, and to make us who we are.

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Lastly, a lovely song for you to listen here. Long lost penpal, by Hello Saferide.





Long lost penpal
by Hello Saferide

Hello
Do you remember me
I am your long lost pen pal
It must have been ten years ago we last wrote
I don't really know what happened
I guess life came in the way
Let me know if you're still alive
Let me know if you ever used that knife or not

Hello
Yes I remember you
I've got a husband and two children now
I work as an accountant and make fairly good money
I still have your letters, you used a pink pen to write them
And you would comfort me
when my tears would stain the ink
And I would send you mix tapes with Kate Bush on

I have to admit I sometimes lied in those letters
Tried to make life better than it was
I still wasn't kissed at sixteen
And I still need a friend

There was this letter
I never told you this back then
But it would be fair to say it saved my life
I sat in the window
The only one left out from a party again
Pretty sure I didn't have a single friend
Then I checked the mailbox

Dear long lost penpal
I was lying the whole time
I'm really a 46 years old man named Luke
I have three children
and a wife, she doesn't care
And I hope you don't resent me
And I hope you do not hate me
For trying to find my way back to what it's like to be young

I have to admit I sometimes lied in those letters
Tried to make life better than it was
I still wasn't kissed at sixteen
And I still need a friend


And some of the times, we need friends to make life better than it was.

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Loneliness is not alone

You scroll across your contacts in your mobile phone and you found no one to call up for a lunch out. You open up a new message box and end up clearing the text you've typed because there's no one you thought would be free enough to reply. You log on to instant messenger online and log off in three minutes after you realise those who are online aren't people you could actually chat with.

And then you shut down computer, turn off phone, sit in front of the 24-hour-entertaining television set and start to wane in blues. Those are the times we call ourselves feeling lonely.

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But are we totally alone with our loneliness? We may always have thought that loneliness is a completely self-contained emotional state. However, study shows that loneliness is actually contagious. Yes, loneliness, like flu or cold, could spread from one person to another.

According to a research led by University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience director John Cacioppo, loneliness can be transmitted from one person to another, whether in person, on the phone or even online. And in turn, this spreading of loneliness influences the pattern of social network around the lonely person. - Chicago tribune

The results of the study shows that when a person admits feeling lonely at one point, his or her family and close friends will be 52% more likely to encounter loneliness two years later. The contagious effect of loneliness will remain significant up to three degrees of separation. It means that when you are feeling lonely, you could influence your friend's friend's friend to feel lonely. - Time magazine

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Besides, the researchers also found that when a person feels lonely for one more day in a week than usual, his or her neighbours who are close friends would experience increased loneliness. - Science daily

It sounds bizarre - that your next-door neighbour, and even your friend's friend's friend whom you may not even heard about his/her name before could feel lonely because you are lonely. Surprising as it sounds, but how does this really happen? What it really takes to make a lonely person makes another person or even a stranger lonely?

According to Cacioppo's research, there is a pattern of contagion that over a period of time, the group of lonely people will be gradually moved to the edge of social networks. In other words, when people become lonely, they become more and more disconnected with the society. - Science Daily

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"On the periphery people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left," said Caciappo in an article published in Science daily.

However, before they lose the last few ties, they spread their feelings of loneliness to their remaining friends, who would then also become lonely.

"People who feel lonely view the social world as more threatening," said Caciappo in an article published in Time magazine. "They may not be aware that they are doing it, but lonely individuals think negatively about other people. So if you are my friend, and I started to treat you negatively, then over time, we would stop being friends.

"But in the meantime, our interactions caused you to treat other people less positively, so you're likely to lose friends, and they in turn are likely to lose friends. That appears to be the means of transmission for loneliness," he added.

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Frowning, making other unpleasant facial expressions, saying hurtful things or even adopting uninviting body postures are all it takes to spread negative feelings. - Time magazine

The significance of the results of this study is that it shows that "loneliness is more like an indicator of the social health of our species on the whole". To the psychology therapy field, it means treatment for loneliness not only involve the patients themselves, but also larger, society-based issues, that probably "there is almost a wave of loneliness that is being propagated by people two or three connections removed from them". - Time magazine

Now that we see how loneliness can be spread and its implication on a larger scale, the question that we should ask is: What can we do to help the situation?

Ultimately, loneliness is our "biological signal of hunger or thirst" (Chicago tribune); only that what we are hungry and thirst for is a helping hand, comforting words, and some wamrth in a friendly hug.

Image source: thenewheretics.wordpress.com

In the end of the day, we are not completely alone when we are lonely - your friend's friend's friend could feel lonely because you are lonely. Now, we are not really that isolated in this colder and colder world after all, are we?