Dr. Vivek Murthy

They'll be there for you.

And she was right.

And it took me reaching out to people proactively to experience that connection again.

So I think all of us in our lives

have experiences of loneliness.

And the thing I think that I try to remember that I would urge others to perhaps keep in mind as well is that it is very hard to tell who is lonely from the outside.

But if you understand the numbers and understand that one in three adults are struggling with loneliness, then you realize many of the people around us are actually lonely.

And you never know when you're reaching out to them

just to check in and say hello, to offer a kind word, just stop by and offer your company.

You never know when that can be a vital lifeline to somebody who's feeling very alone.

I think a healthy social life looks like

a life where we have a few people around us who we can be real with.

That means being honest about how you feel.

It's being open about what you're struggling with.

It means being able to ask for help.

It also means being able to reciprocate that, being able to offer help to others, not waiting for an invitation to help, but stepping up and showing up when there are people who are in need.

You don't need to do that with a lot of people.

You don't need hundreds of best friends.

You might be two, three, four people like in your life.

Not all of them may be physically around you, but to know that those people exist in your life, to know you can lean on them and that they can lean on you, that can make all the difference in the world.