The Joy of Friendship

I hope you are not lonely.  I  hope you feel loved, cherished and respected. 

It’s what we all need: friendship, connection, relationships of various kinds.  Read any research into mental health, for any age group but particularly those of us over 60,  and you will find that social connection always comes up as a key factor not just for happiness but for our physical health as well.  So much so that GPs in the UK can now prescribe social activities as part of a holistic approach to physical and mental healthcare.  This social prescribing can include walking groups, exercise classes, community gardening, knit and natter groups and individual befriending.

Of course, you can be lonely at any age: alone in the school playground, isolated as a new Mum, no time for a social life while you are climbing the career ladder.  But older people are especially vulnerable.  According to the charity Age UK, over two million over 75s in England live alone and over a million report that they can go a month without speaking to a family member, friend or neighbour. Living alone doesn’t automatically mean you are isolated, but it is all too easy to be left feeling lonely and not needed, especially if you’ve lost your partner,  your family moves away, or you start to lose your health and mobility. 

Don’t let this happen to you. 

Nurture the friendships and acquaintances that you already have and don’t rule out making new friends.  Like plants, relationships need to be nourished with our time, care, attention, and sometimes patience.

Keep in touch, don’t wait for others to contact you.  Be proactive, an instigator. You might worry that friends or family haven’t time to spend with you, so just invite them over for a coffee rather than a whole day visit, or arrange to meet at a café. 

Don’t feel you are being a nuisance, especially with younger friends.  It’s all too easy to feel that as an older person you are the needy one, yet we have a great deal to offer, to ‘bring to the party’ (perhaps literally):  wisdom, life experience, humour, warmth, patience.  We know the value of friendship and we can be very good friends.

Just picking up the phone and calling seems to have slipped out of fashion; we worry about disturbing people or intruding on their day or evening, so it can help to arrange a call time in advance, by text or WhatsApp. 

The Covid lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 were challenging for relationships of any kind, but at least they introduced us to new ways of communicating, namely by Zoom.  Four years on, I regularly ‘zoom’ with individual friends or small groups and we have set times in the week for the calls.  It has proven to be a lifeline for many of us.

Twice a week I ‘zoom’ with Vivien for about an hour and we never run out of anything to say!  We have been friends since we were six, having met in the school playground. I was new to the school and knew no one.  Vivien appeared to be on her own one morning break and one of us asked the other if they’d like to play. The rest is history:  of a life-long friendship, shared experiences, and all the ups and downs of professional, personal and family life over the years, despite living over 200 miles apart since the age of 11.

When we stayed with each other in the school holidays we would squeeze into a photo booth either at Euston or Liverpool Lime Street station to take the 1970s version of a selfie and it became a tradition. I only have one of these left; here we are aged about 12.

And over 50 years later – no need for a photo booth these days, although if we see one it is still tempting to dive in!

 Vivien is my ‘oldest’ friend so recently it surprised me to realise that friendships I consider more recent have been going strong for over 30 and over 40 years.

When I was about ten I was given an autograph book.  My collection consisted mainly of family signatures and messages but it also includes one by the waitress at our holiday hotel in Berwick-upon-Tweed, who was delighted by her new celebrity status... Annie wrote, “Make new friends but keep the old. The one silver, the other gold,” in a slight paraphrase of lines in a poem by Joseph Parry.  How right she was! 

Whatever your age, don’t rule out making new friendships – they are as precious as silver and can add real value to your life.   But don’t neglect your longstanding friendships or take them for granted – they are your ‘Golden Oldies.’