The Coonridge Digest: In need of a shot of optimism

Greetings from the Ridge.

I’ll tell you the truth, these two guys irritated me when I heard of their first discovery. Dr. Nicholas Christakis at Harvard and James Fowler at the University of California were the dudes who’d studied obesity patterns and found that your number of fat friends influenced the likelihood of you drooping over your own belt loops. Made me feel guilty to socialize with my skinny friends for fear of them catching my weight virus.

Now Christakis and Fowler have announced the results of a 20-year study with much more cheerful results. According to their finding published in the British Medical Journal, happiness is passed along social networks. It’s the three-degrees-of-separation thing. Your joyful outlook toward life can not only be passed along to your friends, but to your friends’ friends, and then even one more step outward.

Sweet.

They studied 5,000 people plus the 50,000 social ties they shared and found that if a subject’s friend was happy, that subject was 15% more likely to be happy too. Your friend’s friend is 10% happier, his friend is 5.6% happier, etc. The happiness dividend goes up even more if the two people are fond of each other. But the bottom line is that your happiness may be affected by folks who you don’t even know.

Sweeter.

This joy virus seems to be immune from such other factors as favorable weather, where the group might live, the unemployment rates, or whether they’re all Cubs fans. Environment wasn’t nearly as strong an issue as relationships.

They’ve even broken the bliss statistics down more precisely, finding that your next-door-neighbor can affect your joy up to 34%, friends living within a mile of you come in at 25%, siblings within a mile at 14%, and your spouse at a rather piddling 8%. I guess that some things resist even the brightest outlook. In fact, if you chart out your social circles to the fourth degree, the average person has a sphere of influence totally 1,181 people. The average flu bug can’t exert that sort of authority.

If you’ve read this far you’ve already begun a self-evaluation of not only your happiness rank, but the ho-ho vs. ho-hum level of your friends. And face it, it’s the end of the year – time to sweep out the old habits and reevaluate ourselves. That’s what I plan to do.

Of course the immediate drawback is composing the letter stating, "I’m sorry, but although you are my friend, you’re also a sour, depressing, pessimistic poop-head, and for the sake of my own happiness I’m afraid we can no longer drink coffee together every afternoon at 3 p.m. I’m afraid you’ll infect me." Christakis and Fowler gave no hints on how to politely delete the sad sacks from your bag of friends.

So I instead decided to test the joy virus theory – at least in my own circle of acquaintances. It’s hard to do. How much of your happiness is due to the folks you hang around and (at least in my case) how much do I attribute to my naturally cheery disposition, my sunny outlook, and my recent purchase of larger and less binding underwear? Giving the researchers the benefit of the doubt, I began to analyze my friends. Were there indeed people who put me in a good mood just thinking of them? Do I have friends who sort of leave me with a glad-glow after I leave their presence? You know, there might be something to this. It was the caller-I.D. function on my phone that proved the point.

When you ring my number in Coonridge my phone flashes your identity.

Sure enough. Over two-day period of time I stopped to judge my smile meter when I’d hear the phone ring and see the name flashed. Some folks would depress a hyena and so I took a vow to avoid them in 2009.

So who do I cling to for a shot of optimism? I didn’t take long to find him. Harold Tegger has lived alone since his wife died but he’s still managed to keep a more cheery outlook than most folks in town with a better situation. During one of those God-awful pre-Christmas days when weather took turns with itself, sleeting-snowing-icing the world with a glaze of misery, Harold put his pickup in a ditch. By the time I came along and saw him walking he’d been hiking through the sub-zero wind-chill for 20 minutes. Harold gladly jumped into my warm Honda, brushed the ice off his shoulders, then turned to me and smiled. He said, "At least the flies sure ain’t too bad."

I need to find more Harold’s in 2009. Better yet, maybe I need to become a Harold myself.

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door, but you’ll enjoy the trip.