13.35.a - France & Friendship + Olympic update

I've accidentally made many friends & maintaining those close friendships is important to me. There are trade-offs involved when you invest in a new relationship PLUS Paris Olympic 2024 UPDATE.

Today at a Glance: your PAID weekly newsletter

1.France & Friendship: Did you know that friendships may have a bigger influence on our happiness, health and mortality risk than anything else in life
2.Paris 2024: Olympic update
3.REMINDER: How to personalise your le Bulletin - eg not everyone loves a book club
4.Thank you so much for your support

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‘le Bulletin' is read across 47 US states and 65 countries and I’m adding to the content breadth and depth each week. If you’re enjoying this ‘le Bulletin’ please consider providing support for my work by upgrading your subscription for as little as €3.75 a month - Merci. Judy - 02.9.23

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1. France & Friendship + Olympic update

Before I migrated le Bulletin newsletter to Substack in May this year, I used to include my personal philosophical ponderings about Friendship, Curiosity, Collaboration, and many other things that had me pondering that week and interesting articles and books that explore and discuss these issues in an interesting fashion… I’ve recently decided to start sprinkling a few of these amongst my pure French content. Do let me know your thoughts on this.

What is Friendship to me?

When anyone asks me what has been the most rewarding part of creating MyFrenchLife Magazine and Community - I have only one immediate response. Its the friendship! The friendship has been amazing, I’d even go so far as to say, astounding. I didn’t set out trying to talk to some extraordinary people (yet I do), nor did I set out to look to make new friends, but that’s just what has happened over the last 13 years… somehow I’ve accidentally accumulated many close friends: fascinating people all of them, enriching my life, happiness, and health.

The MyFrenchLife Magazine has introduced me to wonderful people: men and women, French and other nationalities, all ages, and from so many walks of life! Many live in France and elsewhere. My life experience gained via all of these people has exploded. I must be about 750 years old in life experience! But in reality, my age is a little less than that :)

Until my personal Facebook account was hacked and cancelled, by the hackers a year ago, I had thousands and thousands of ‘friends’, now with my new Facebook account I only have hundreds ;). But, like you I’m sure, this is not how I count friends! Friends to me come in all shapes and sizes: close, distant, etc.

Then, recently I came across an article I enjoyed about the limits of the number of friendships it’s viable to maintain, the tradeoffs of investing in new people, AND how much more important friendship is to happiness, health, and mortality risk than anything else in life.

I decided to share it with you. Do let me know if you enjoy it and if you have any reactions…

The Circles of Friendship

The evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar explains the limits on how many connections humans can keep up, and the trade-offs involved when you invest in a new relationship.

Think about this:

The layers [of friendship] come about primarily because the time we have for social interaction is not infinite. You have to decide how to invest that time, bearing in mind that the strength of relationships is directly correlated with how much time and effort we give them.”

According to Jason Kottke:

It's from Robin Dunbar's recent book, Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships:

Fascinating...In essence, the number and quality of our friendships may have a bigger influence on our happiness, health and mortality risk than anything else in life save for giving up smoking' Guardian, Book of the Day

You might recall the author's name from his concept of Dunbar's number that on average people can maintain about 150 friendships with others, a limit that is determined by human brain size and function. The chart is a more detailed version of the concept: it shows, roughly, the number of people we can have meaningful relationships with at various levels of intimacy, Dunbar explains in this Atlantic interview: