Standing at The Bottom of A Steep Hill: The Value of Friends
Posted in Blog by Elizabeth Neeld, Joie de Vivre: Enjoying LifeA few days ago a close friend of mine died. John and I first met in 1967 in the office of the president of Cleveland State Community College. Each of us had come to the office that day to sign a contract to teach at this new school, the first community college established in East Tennessee. For the forty-two years since that afternoon, John and I remained close friends, never losing touch, never going very long without visiting in person, talking, writing, and/or emailing, although we ended up living more than a thousand miles apart for many decades. I’ve inventoried the friendships in my life since John died; and the forty-two years of friendship with John is the longest active friendship I have been privileged to have in my life.
This long friendship-and now the loss of that dear friend-was on my mind one day this week when I saw an article in The New York Times about friendship. The journalist described a study done last year with thirty-four students at the University of Virginia. The students were taken to the base of a steep hill and fitted with a weighed backpack. The students were then asked to estimate the steepness of the hill. Some participants stood next to friends during the experiment, and some stood alone.
Here was the interesting result:
The students who stood next to friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill than did students who stood alone. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the students estimated the hill to be.
A professor at the University of Virginia commented: “Friendship is an undervalued resource. The consistent message of these studies is that friends make your life better.”
And, I would add, based on the outcome of that experiment, that long-time friends make your life even better.
I think I have identified my next longest-running friendship, now that John has died. And until I can contact Patricia Ramsey and let her know that our friendship now holds that longest-running spot, I’m going to do my best to avoid standing at the base of any steep hills.
