What is a Friend?

Many people have several hundred facebook friends, hundreds or even thousands of followers on twitter, linkedIn, and other social media websites. This makes you wonder, what these “friends,” “followers” or “connections” really are and what functions to they fulfill in our daily lives. What are friends? And can the interaction with virtual circles actually be a substitute for face-to-face friendships that we have in real life? And what does it mean for our society that we have so many “friends”?

As we all know, friends are generally selected individuals who we are in close personal contact with. They know us, care for us, understand us, and worry about us when something is wrong. They are people we trust. Often we share the same interests, having met them through a joint hobby or we come from the same home town having grown up together. We share the memories of fun times and remember other bad times when they were there for us and we needed them. Friends have each other’s backs. Where I come from (Germany), real friends are special. One doesn’t accumulate a whole lot of them during a lifetime, but the ones you make, you keep. Friends don’t include everyone you ever met during high school or during activities, but only a selected few who truly know you and who are worth spending time with. This may be different in other countries where the term is used much more inclusively. With these selected few, you try to stay in touch throughout your life via phone, email, facebook (if they are on it) and meet in person as much as possible, but with age, needs of the family, and growing physical distance it may be more and more difficult to see each other regularly. But when you are lucky enough to see them again, even after years, it still feels the same and surprisingly you pick up right where you left off. 

So how is it different with online friendships? Granted, many of the connections we have in social media are people from our childhood, adolescence, college, grad school or work. So we did spend real time with them at some point. But what about all those people who we don’t really know and still have in our platforms as friends, connections, followers? We accept friends, because they follow us, accept us first, without a background check, without testing the chemistry, without sharing anything with them. Why do we do that? It probably has to do with human nature, with our necessity to be liked, that someone finds us interesting, and our hope to be understood. We like if others like and share our posts, because it shows us that we are not irrelevant to others. At the same time it also changes all values that used to accompany friendship. In social media websites we blindly trust, if we may accept someone as a friend who we don’t know, who nobody recommended to us and who we may not share any interest with. 

By using social media one shifts from becoming a private person to a public person. The spheres of private and public become blurred, even if one only shares information in specific circles, others may still become aware of it. As soon as someone comments or likes one of your posts, other circles gain access to that same information, even though it was meant to be private. Being aware of that, most people don't share the same information online as they would in person. Others enjoy being in the lime-light and get inspired by having a virtual audience and may share even more. Still others see it as teaching tool, as a way to spread their way of life, their views, their political opinions and use it massively. So for most people the online content differs strongly from what they would share in face-to-face meetings with friends.

But can online sharing fulfill the same function as sharing among friends? Probably online comments can instantly make you feel better, noticed, appreciated or consoled. Social media is a great forum to share information quickly and get instant feedback. People can send immediate positive vibes and give instant virtual hugs. That surely has a positive effect on the individual who is in need of comfort. Also, if you just won something (lottery or award) or finished your first marathon or half-marathon (still on my bucket list!) people can instantly congratulate you and enhance your sense of accomplishment. So for positive achievements, it is wonderful to spread the word. When new babies are born, within hours many mothers post the photos of their new babies on facebook, so that everyone in their circles can adore them. Also, if you have any sort of bad news, you can share it with your circles and get instant feedback, e.g. if you locked yourself out of the house again, if you are stranded with a flat tire, if your hot water stopped working in the middle of winter, if your son broke his arm jumping down the staircase, etc. Your friends and followers instantly send good vibes, best wishes, virtual hugs and things already seem a little better. Some even send real help to get you out of your crisis. Even when close friends or relatives die, people tend to post the announcements on facebook. They receive instant condolence messages that make them feel less alone. So all these things are positive as they bring people closer together faster. 

But be aware, if a person over-shares (e.g. pictures of every meal, most outfits, and most activities) others may block them or start to ignore all their posts. Nobody’s life is that interesting all the time that we crave ALL the details, right? At times, we may also ignore a person, because their life seems not spectacular enough as mirrored in the photos and comments they post on social media. They may not have a gift with words or may not be so good looking or may not live very daring lives, so we consciously or subconsciously ignore them or may decide stop following them. As quickly as we started following them, because they seemed interesting at that time, we may drop them. Being "in" and "out" changes quickly and online trends are fleeting. So, in contrast to real friendships, online connections can be very superficial and short-lived. At times, online posts seem like a popularity contest or a demonstration of who has the best, most comfortable life, who looks the best (for their age) and who "made it." But we always have to remember that any online presence is very controlled: You only share what you want others to know. This put forward only those parts of yourself that you want to publicize and leaves a lot of open blanks, which create a quite distorted image of yourself. And even the information that is shared, may not even be accurate, but purposefully picked to impress others.

Online friendships can boost our ego and fulfill short-term needs that we may crave. Social media platforms created an easy way to stay in touch with many people that we share some personal or professional history with, but all online connections, circles, friends or followers can never substitute real friends. While you gain some insights into parts of people's lives and maybe a few of their thoughts and daily routines through social media, you cannot really see who they are, who they have become, and who they want to be. You cannot sit with them over a cold beer or a glass of red wine after a good meal and talk, laugh or cry with them about things that really matter to you. 

What if we Were More Intelligent?

Last month, I watched the movie Lucy on the plane. Even though it was not one of the best movies I ever saw (far from it), I still keep thinking about it. The interesting thing about it was the particular set of questions raised by it. In short, the movie is about a woman called Lucy (played by the beautiful Scarlett Johansson) who involuntarily consumes drugs that enhance her brain capacity from ten percent (the film works with the premise that this is the norm for humans) to the total of 100%. A brilliant neuroscientist (played by the amazing Morgan Freeman), who devoted his entire life to hypothesize the outcomes of humans being able to utilize more of their brain’s capacity, can witness Lucy’s transformation. The way the movie plays this plot out is not so interesting to me, because it seems forced at times, but I rather enjoy the larger questions that it raises: What would happen to the world and us humans, if we were able to become more intelligent? What would the world look like? How would humans interact with each other? Would there still be violence in the world? Would people still waste time on petty little things or would we focus on the bigger, pressing issues that need to be addressed.

I enjoyed the naming of the protagonist and the film as Lucy. It wasn’t a coincidence, but was carefully chosen and makes perfect sense. The protagonist is named Lucy, because the name indicates a connection between her and the first known female, our almost human (Australopithecus afarensis), ancestor who lived 3.2-million-years ago and who scientists discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. National Geographic reported that scientists named her Lucy after the popular Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds that was played again and again at the party to celebrate the unearthing of our earliest ancestor. The Lucy of the movie is the pinnacle of human evolution as she is the highest developed human who ever lived. So the name Lucy is linking the most primitive to the most sophisticated "woman" in human evolution.

Before going into the details of the hypothetical questions, we have to note that the premise of the movie, that humans only use ten percent of their brain’s capacity, is wrong. For many decades, scientists have unsuccessfully been trying to debunk it. The original statement that led to this false belief goes back to the 1890s, when a scientist first declared that humans only used a small percentage of their brains, but never actually attached a number to this statement. It kept getting repeated and in the 1930s, the figure of ten percent became attached. Despite scientists' many efforts to destroy the common misperception and a number of conclusive studies to show that humans activate “most parts of their brain” during every day and "many parts of the brain" remaining active while we sleep, the myth still persists until today. The movie plays into this and will unfortunately help to spread the myth even further.

Despite the false premise, the movie raises many interesting questions. Even if we humans use most parts of the brain throughout the day and many parts even during the night, there seems to be still a lot of room for improvement. So what if we (the human race) were to become more intelligent? What would that look like? How would we interact with each other and in what kind of world would we live in?

The movie made us believe that violence would still play a big part in everyday reality, even if we were more intelligent. I doubt that. I believe that if we were to be more intelligent, there would be no need for violence. If people would be more reasonable, we would come to the conclusion that violence leads to more violence and cannot be a solution. Using simple logic, we would realize that intolerance and discrimination of any kind are unacceptable forms of dealing with others. Period. People would realize that dividing people up in different groups worth different treatment makes no sense. Why would a human life in one region of the world count less than in others? Why would girls be valued less than boys? Why would one skin color be preferable to any others? All these differentiations, we would realize, make no sense.

If humans were more intelligent, intelligence would not only encompass hard factual knowledge or the ability to reason, but also social and emotional intelligence that leads to empathy and responsibility. Humans would be more aware of the inequalities that persist in this world today and more willing to help each other, because we are all one (the human race). Competition between nations would not persist. Exploitation would not be tolerated. Rich people would share their wealth with less fortunate, not because any government forced them, but because they would agree that the money needs to be invested in the most reasonable way. Food supplies, for example, would be divided up differently so that no person in inner-city districts in the Western world and in broad regions of the least developed world have to go hungry or starve to death. 

Humans would make sure, out of responsibility toward each other, that everyone lives in decent, acceptable living conditions and that every child receives a good education, not only because that is the right thing to do, but also because it is the best way to assure future political stability and economic well-being. We would realize that with increasing globalization and interconnectedness of the world, we need secure, clean, safe, and positive living conditions everywhere to protect ourselves against poverty, violence, and orthodoxy. 

What Exactly is Time?

As we prepared and celebrated my older daughter’s birthday last week, I was thinking back to all the milestone moment in her life, wondering how we made it this far, and ELEVEN years passed by so quickly. Isn’t it strange? We have proof that it has been eleven years, but still it seemed so much shorter (even though some of the days felt that they would never end).  Why do we perceive time as expanding sometimes and standing still at others? What makes it go faster and what slows it down? Which factors play into changes in its perception? Time is never the same. It seems to be tied to emotions and it also has to do with one’s stage in life. Since Einstein we know that time is relative. It changes according to perception and according to the system that it is bound to. But what does that even mean? And how does perception of time change over the course of one’s life?

For children, time seems to consist of long periods of waiting for specific activities and events to occur. They focus on events and developments in the future. They get excited and try to figure out how long they have to wait before those events are finally there. As soon as they can, they ask e.g. if it is their birthday yet, how many days until their favorite holiday, and when will they see grandma again. Their focus on events in the future converts big chunks of the present into waiting time. The past is not at all interesting for them. There are lots of hope, dreams, and aspirations tied to their perception of they future.  They dream about what they want to be, where and how they want to live, who they may consider marrying, etc.

When we become parents, the focus shifts abruptly, as our lives suddenly get dominated not only by the needs of others, but also by the shift from the focus on the future (awaiting the day the baby will be born) to the present (baby needs to be fed and cleaned, etc.). Work has to be accomplished in the here and now so that the child has a bright, healthy, and promising future. The parents then await the child to reach their developmental milestones, but their own focus is the present. Events of the future have to be considered, planned, and executed. At work everything is about getting the task done that needs to be accomplished at that specific moment, deadlines haunt us. At home it is not much different. All the little things have to be prepared, breakfasts served, lunches and snacks packed, laundry cleaned, etc. If a birthday is approaching, like in our house recently, not only the gifts, the cupcakes, the birthday cake have to be organized and delivered to the appropriate places at the correct times, but most likely a party will be held to mark the milestone, which also entails careful preparation. While children probably only have an awareness of the upcoming party, parents are well aware of all the work that leads up to the special event. So in this stage of life we have to be focused on the present. Often we get overwhelmed because it seems that there is not enough time to accomplish everything that needs to be done. Lots of people feel that they are “running out of time” or “have no time.”

As we age and our kids leave us to live their own lives, we tend to live more and more in the past, remembering good and bad times in our childhood and thinking back to the memorable days when our own children reached their specific milestones. Focus shifts to the past and time starts to be measured by the time SINCE something happened: “five days since my daughter called me” or “two weeks since I saw them”. Time is measured in the intervals that are between the visits with family and friends and time spent together. Again, like in childhood, there are long stretches of waiting time that are not filled with so many aspirations for the future as memories of the past.

We all know well about the physical changes through which the passing of time manifests itself. For children, these signs are hopefully awaited (first lost tooth, first beard hair, first signs of development) as they signify the entering into a new phase in life. They want to grow and become full members of society. For parents, it is a dreaded shift, that people are determined to stall as long as possible or to fight head-on. Who wants to have grey hair, an increasing waistline, and wrinkles? There is a multi-billion dollar industry making profits from us all not willing to accept the process of aging, but that may be a good theme for a different blog post.

How we experience the passing of time is not only linked to our stage in life, but also to all kinds of emotions. When we are having a good time for example, time appears to pass very quickly, “it flies”. And when we are bored or waiting for something to happen is seems to drag endless or even “stands still.” But intense emotions seem to have an even more profound effect on our way of experiencing time. When we grieve the death of a loved one or suffer from a break-up of a long relationship, we only feel grief and sadness. It consumes us. There is no room for anything else. The same thing is true for the opposite emotions. When we are completely happy for example, laughing with our kids, rolling on the floor, we are consumed by happiness. We BECOME that emotion and time seems to stand still. We do not think about anything else, not the future, not the past, we just completely live in the moment. Similarly, when we immerse ourselves in an activity that we love to do (for some it may be their job, for others it may be a hobby), we tend to forget things around us and completely live in the moment. As if space and time become irrelevant. (Just think about new lovers who seem to forget time.) So, perception of time, it seems,  also has to do with our undivided attention, but it also has to do with how well we immerse ourselves in the activity that we are engaged in at the moment.

Studies have shown that meditation can alter the perception of time by changing mechanisms in the brain. While meditating, the outside world is systematically blocked out and the focus shifts to inside the body and the mind. As a result, influences that usually distract us, are contained before they even get to us. This not only improves our mental and physical health, but also can adjust our perception of time through relaxation and re-shifting focus. Time then “slows down” again. Buddhist monks for example are able to conduct so focused meditations (and slow their breaths) that sitting still and focusing on the inside, they believe, allows them to see a glimpse of the divine that may allow them to escape the everlasting cycle of rebirth and life. That means that focus, in a way, can help us escape the boundaries of time. The same mechanism is at work while practicing yoga. By remaining in yoga poses, slowing one's breaths and concentrating on the muscles used to remain still in the poses, focus can also be shifted and time perception can be altered subsequently.

So what do we get from this? Besides me finding it extremely interesting to think about, it may help us when we get caught up in daily rushes and worries. Maybe when we “run out of time” it is good to stop for a minute and consider the moment that we live in and refocus on the important things. In the end, time is all we have in life. The more memorable moments we create for us and for others, the more beautiful memories we can look back on and contemplate once we are old and have more time. 

Is a Hug Just a Hug?

Recently the hug between U.S. President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Modi has gained a lot of traction in the media. Apparently it was a signal that the U.S. entered into a special relationship with India. The NYT reported that Obama did not expect anything other than a firm handshake after leaving his plane in India, but instead he had been upgraded to a welcome with a big hug. 

So with all the talk about what that specific hug actually means for the U.S.-Indian relationship, I can’t help but remember the hugs between leaders of the Eastern Bloc nations during the Cold War. The most memorable one for me (as a Western German) is the one between Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and Eastern German General Secretary Erich Honecker from 1979 (see below).

But hugs as political statement also lead to the more general question about the meaning of a tight squeeze. How much can one actually read into a hug? Does a hug always imply a silent message? And does a hug always mark the beginning of a special relationship? We all know that a hug is normally exchanged between close friends and family. Even between colleagues who celebrate special occasions such as birthdays, the birth of a new baby, getting married or engaged, for job promotions, baptisms, etc. But we also hug on sad occasions like funerals, after break-ups, after having failed. It always sends the message that one is not alone and can count on you, right?

But there are also lots of grey areas, where it is rather unclear whether a hug is appropriate or expected or the opposite. Have you ever had moments when you were not really sure? When you have no idea, if you should hug a person for hello and goodbye? I have experienced plenty or weirdness around hugs in different countries and distinct situations. First of all, there are cultural differences. When I lived in Denmark and slowly began to make new friends from a broad spectrum of religious, cultural, and national backgrounds, there was a lot of not knowing whether a hug would be appropriate. Yes, there seem to be cultural and social rules to hugging. The most culturally opposite with respect to hugging, if I remember correctly from my student days, were people from Latin America who were very inclusive with their hugs and those from China who were rather stiff and seemed to avoid all physical contact. 

"We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. 

We need 12 hugs a day for growth."

Medically, it is proven that hugs help people to stay healthy and stay connected. Every person needs 8 hugs per day to improve immunity, release tension, stress, and improve self-esteem and empathy. You may remember the image of a set of premature twin babies in a neonatal unit that was floating around the social media sites last year in which one of the twins was expected not to be able to survive.

Despite her orders, the supervising nurse placed the stronger twin into the bed with the weaker twin  and the most amazing thing happened: the stronger baby placed its arm around the sibling and thus helped her survive by embracing her. The hug helped to raise the sibling’s body temperature and stabilized her condition to that extent that she was able to survive.

This means that hugs have power. With every hug that is at least 10 seconds long the hormone oxytocin is released in our bodies. The result is not only improved self-esteem, the capability of fighting depression, it strengthens our immune system, lowers the risk of heart disease, and fights infections. Oxytocin also decreases the level of stress hormones (primarily cortisol) in our body and lowers our blood pressure response to anxiety-producing events. 

Medical evidence about the power of hugs goes even further: If parents hug their children every day and a hug lasts more than 10 seconds, the children will have a raised self-confidence and will walk through life much happier than those who don’t. One study of mothers affection towards their young children demonstrated that the brain volume of children with a nurturing and hugging mother was 10% larger than that of children with a mother that was not nurturing and didn't hug much. So there is a direct correlation between the development of a child’s brain and better memory and the amount of affection received from their primary care giver. Also another study showed that kids who did not get hugged enough have delayed development in walking, talking, and reading.

So what does it mean in the bigger picture? It means that we should stop worrying about those awkward seconds when we are about to greet a-not-so-close friend and embrace the moment. Carpe diem! Throw all those doubts overboard, denounce cultural, social taboos and lean in for the hug! Make sure to get your recommended 12 hugs a day to stay healthy and happy and form many special relationships.