"Friendship seems to be the key, however, to a longer, happier life....
"Given the research indicating how important friendships are to health ([reporter] Zaslow cites one study where women with the most friends lived 22% longer than those with the fewest number), perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that women tend to outlast men....
"Love is the most essential ingredient. David Brooks at the New York Times gives it a more clinical-sounding summation: "Relationships are the key to happiness."....
"If friendship is the key to happiness, then maybe this is the key to friendship, to be enmeshed -- not just tangentially or voyeuristically, but physically -- in the lives of others. That can be hard to swallow in a culture that prizes individualism, mobility and privacy."
From The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2009
