To feel less alone, cultivate wisdom

“Of all our possessions, wisdom alone is immortal.” Like this old Greek proverb, researchers invite us to cultivate wisdom, which would, among other things, reduce the feeling of loneliness. “One of the important findings of our study is an inverse correlation between loneliness and wisdom. People who scored higher on the measure of wisdom were less lonely, and vice versa.” explains Doctor Dilip V. Jeste, director of the study published in early October in the journal Aging and Mental Health.

Empathy and Compassion

Many studies associate feelings of loneliness with greater than average health problems, and this research is no exception. “Loneliness was consistently associated with poor overall health, poor sleep quality, and lack of happiness, while the reverse was generally true for wisdom.” continues Dr. Dilip V. Jeste.

More specifically, the notion of wisdom has been broken down by scientists, who have associated it with empathy, compassion, self-reflection and mastery of emotions. They then found that empathy and compassion had the strongest inverse correlation with loneliness. In other words, people who were the most compassionate and empathetic were the least lonely.

Loneliness concerns 10 to 15% of the French population

Note that these results hold whatever the culture, since the data was collected in the United States and Italy. The people assessed were between 50 and 90 years old.

Loneliness has been declared”great national cause” of the year 2011 in France. It now concerns between 10% and 15% of the French population. Are considered as objectively isolated people who never physically meet the members of all their sociability networks (family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, associative activity) or who only have very episodic contact with these different networks: sometimes in the year or less often.