Ignorance about who we are in eternity is resulting in a pandemic of loneliness that affects our quality of life and length of life. Loneliness also results in maladies such as dementia.
Most people don’t realize we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. As a result, they don’t feel love and compassion for all people. A June 2023 study of loneliness issued by the Surgeon General of the United states, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, was published in Nature Human Behavior. The in-depth meta-analysis incorporated 90 cohort studies and involved over 2.2 million individuals. His finding was that social disconnection causes premature death. The effect surpasses the risks associated with obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. Lonely and isolated people are 34% more likely to die from heart disease and 24% more likely to die from cancer, the study found.
Society today has lost the stable agrarian farm family that provided connection and love. People move from place to place without cultivating friendships. Families are separated by changes in job locations in our mobile society. The stable family has become fragmented. To recover from this pandemic of loneliness, society must help people grow to be loving and compassionate by realizing who we are in eternity. Learning who we are affects our physical lives as well as our mental and spiritual lives.
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Source: Dr. Patricia Varacallo, DO, “Feeling This Emotion Too Often Can Lead to Premature Death, Says New Study,” The Healthy, July 26, 2023.
