Being pious or feeling religious was not been found directly related to greater longevity. It’s quiet interesting to me because I very much believed in the power of self-fulfilling, even though I’m not a religious person. It turned out that it is the byproducts of being congregational: good health habits, larger social connection and more opportunity to help others that contribute to a longer life, especially for women. It seems what you do matters more than what you think.
We all know about the positive influence of social connection on people or, simply speaking, the importance of friends. However, the finding on which aspects of social ties were prominent on the path to long life surprised me. It’s found that people who live longer were those have more actual ties in social networks instead of those who felt the most connected and appreciated. It’s shocking to me, because I just experienced in my life that the true feeling of be loved given by only two or three friends mattered so much more to me than a huge group of friends with no one actually cared.
More and more people are having pets as companies now. So I was pretty excited when the chapter talks about whether pets could substitute friends and contribute to long life. It turns out even with the increased health-promoting behaviors associated with raising pets, the companions provided by pets did not promote longer life.
Social relation should be the thing to start with when it comes to initiating a plan for greater life span. Compared to improving marital relationship or career, going out to make some friends and be a good person who helps other sounds much easier. I think I will give up on convincing my mother to have a dog as companies, but encourage her to develop make more real friends and community engagement now.
I am not pious myself either but I think it is important to separate the truly religious aspects of this from the byproducts of being religious because one can engage in many of the positive and beneficial behaviours, such as taking care of oneself and being active in one’s community, and reap the rewards without being inherently religious. It makes me wonder if those who are religious but do not engage in these behaviours or those who are religious but are obnoxiously close-minded and only surround themselves with like-minded toxicity would also reap the same benefits.