{"id":6844,"date":"2022-02-03T08:14:04","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T13:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=6844"},"modified":"2022-02-03T08:14:04","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T13:14:04","slug":"the-surprising-importance-of-casual-acquaintances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2022\/02\/the-surprising-importance-of-casual-acquaintances\/","title":{"rendered":"The Surprising Importance of Casual Acquaintances"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your undemanding, everyday connections with everyone from your neighbors to your local pharmacist\u2014people you barely know\u2014are important. Journalist Judith Graham explains how and why in this article she wrote for <\/span><\/i>Kaiser Health News<\/span><\/i><\/a> (KHN), which posted her piece online on August 2,2021. The story also ran on <\/span><\/i>CNN<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Funding from the Silver Century Foundation helps KHN develop articles (like this one) on longevity and related health and social issues.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In May, Vincent Keenan traveled from Chicago to Charlottesville, VA, for a wedding\u2014his first trip out of town since the start of the pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHi there!\u201d he called out to customers at a gas station where he\u2019d stopped on his way to the airport. \u201cHow\u2019s your day going?\u201d he said he asked the Transportation Security Administration agent who checked his ID. \u201cIsn\u2019t this wonderful?\u201d he exclaimed to guests at the wedding, most of whom were strangers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was striking up conversations with people I didn\u2019t know everywhere I went,\u201d said Keenan, 65, who retired in December as chief executive officer of the Illinois Academy of Family Physicians. \u201cEven if they just grunted at me, it was a great day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t only close friends Keenan missed seeing during 15 months of staying home and trying to avoid COVID-19. It was also dozens of casual acquaintances and people he ran into at social events, restaurants, church and other venues.<\/span><\/p>\n

These relationships with people we hardly know or know only superficially are called \u201cweak ties\u201d\u2014a broad and amorphous group that can include anyone from your neighbors or your pharmacist to members of your book group or fellow volunteers at a school.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Keenan, who admitted he\u2019s an unabashed extrovert, many older adults are renewing these connections with pleasure after losing touch during the pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Feeling connected to other people, not just the people who are closest to you, turns out to be incredibly important.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014Gillian Sandstrom <\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Casual relationships have <\/span>several benefits<\/a>,<\/span> according to researchers who\u2019ve studied them. These ties can cultivate a sense of belonging, provide bursts of positive energy, motivate us to engage in activities, and expose us to new information and opportunities\u2014all, without the emotional challenges that often attend close relationships with family and friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

Multiple studies have found that older adults with a broad array of \u201cweak\u201d as well as \u201cclose\u201d ties enjoy better physical and psychological well-being and live longer than people with narrower, less diverse social networks. Also, older adults with broad, diverse social networks have more opportunities to develop new relationships when cherished friends or family members <\/span>move away or die<\/a>.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFeeling connected to other people, not just the people who are closest to you, turns out to be incredibly important,\u201d said Gillian Sandstrom, a senior lecturer in the department of psychology at the University of Essex in England.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sandstrom\u2019s research has found that people who <\/span>talk to more acquaintances<\/span><\/a> daily tend to be happier than people who have fewer of these interactions. Even talking to strangers makes people feel less lonely and more trusting, she has discovered.<\/span><\/p>\n

Claire Lomax, 76, of Oakland, CA, who\u2019s unmarried, has made a practice of chatting with strangers all her life. Among her greatest pleasures in recent years was volunteering at the Oakland Police Department, where she would ask patrol officers about their families or what was happening at the station.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI never wanted a man of my own, but I like to be around them,\u201d she explained. \u201cSo, I got to have my guy buzz without any complications, and I felt recognized and appreciated,\u201d Lomax told me. Since becoming fully vaccinated, she\u2019s volunteering in person at the police stations again\u2014a deep source of satisfaction.<\/span><\/p>\n

In places like coffee shops and gyms, you can feel part of a community. <\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even people who describe themselves as introverts enjoy the positivity that casual interactions can engender.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, people are more likely to have purely positive experiences with weak ties\u201d because emotional complications are absent, said Katherine Fiori, a prominent researcher and chair of the psychology department at Adelphi University in Garden City, NY.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lynn Eggers, 75, a retired psychologist in Minneapolis, loved going to coffee shops and the gym before COVID hit. \u201cIn both places, you can be in a group and alone,\u201d she told me. \u201cYou can choose to talk to someone or not. But you feel you\u2019re part of the community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At a light-rail station, Eggers would strike up conversations with strangers: two police officers, who told her about growing up in Somalia, a working-class Texan, whose daughter won a scholarship to Harvard, a young Vietnamese woman whose parents worried she was abandoning her culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Eggers stopped taking public transportation for fear of COVID, she missed \u201cgetting these glimpses into other ways of seeing the world.\u201d Instead, she started chatting with neighbors in daily walks around her neighborhood\u2014another way to feel connected.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many people may have found that neighbors, mail carriers and delivery people became more important during the pandemic\u2014simply because they were around when others were not, said Karen Fingerman, a professor of human ecology at the University of Texas-Austin. As pandemic restrictions lift, \u201cthe key is to get out in daily life again\u201d and re-engage with a variety of people and activities, she recommended.<\/span><\/p>\n

Helen Bartos, 69, a retired clinical psychologist, lives in a condominium community in Rochester, NY. \u201cWith COVID, a whole group of us started getting together outside,\u201d she told me. \u201cWe\u2019d bring out chairs and drinks, wear masks, and sit around and talk. It was very bonding. All of these people are neighbors; now I would call some of them friends.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ellie Mixter-Keller, 66, of Milwaukee, turned to social gatherings sponsored by the activity group Meetup six years ago after a divorce disrupted her life. \u201cIt was my salvation. It exposed me to a bunch of new people who I didn\u2019t have to date or have to dinner,\u201d she said. Now that she\u2019s fully vaccinated, she\u2019s busy almost every night of the week attending Meetup events and informal get-togethers arranged by people she\u2019s met.<\/span><\/p>\n

In some cases, varying views of COVID vaccines have made casual interactions more difficult. Patty Beemer, 61, of Hermosa Beach, CA, used to go swing-dancing two or three times a week before the pandemic. \u201cIt\u2019d be 20 seconds of chitchat and just dance\u201d before all those events were canceled, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past several months, however, the swing-dance community in and around Los Angeles has split, with some events requiring proof of vaccination and others open to everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBefore, everyone danced with everyone, without really thinking about it. Now, I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s going to be like that. I\u2019m not sure how much mixing is going to happen,\u201d Beemer said. \u201cAnd that sense of shared humanity, which is so meaningful to all of us, may be harder to find.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May, Vincent Keenan traveled from Chicago to Charlottesville, VA, for a wedding\u2014his first trip out of town since the start of the pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more The Surprising Importance of Casual Acquaintances<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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