Friends and Longevity

Read an article once on a research project indicating a link between elderly people who successfully avoided Alzheimers and who also maintained highly active social lives and many friends.

I look at my grandparents (85 and 83) who, thank G-d, are 100% with us and whose social life is more active than most college students. They go out, easily, 5 times a week and invest heavily in their friends and friendships.

Since Tamar and I moved to Silver Spring, we have been blessed to meet many, many wonderful people. Our primary socializing activity is shared meals on the Sabbath, either Friday night or Saturday lunchtime. We typically have 4-6 adults and the same number of children over. These obviously require a ton of preparation work and are not the most inexpensive things to do.

Today, we had one of those gatherings and I really felt a blessing. I saw 5 or 6 girls (all girls today) playing in the various rooms of the house and looked around the table at the adults, our friends, and thought about the investment we were making (in time and money :-) in these relationships and, honestly, it just felt good.

I'm very financial focus and tend to think in terms like ROI, payback period, and cost-effectiveness. Much like children, quantifying the ROI on the dollar investment isn't easy, but you just know it's worth it...it's worth more than money, obviously (that's the thing I have to remind myself when I see the credit card grocery bill) and if it pays off in the long run in terms of longevity and mental clarity, well, there's another priceless ROI calculation.