When my son, Tony, was 11 years old, he got a small job helping out with a traveling carnival (狂欢节) in our town. He didn’t come home at lunchtime and got back for supper as usual after he finished his work.

I asked him where he had lunch and he told me he made some new friends at the carnival, some young men who were twin brothers, and their mom and dad. They had paid him a few dollars and invited him for lunch in return for helping them with their chores (杂务).

I was glad Tony found new friends but a little worried about the type of people who might be traveling in a carnival. “Oh, Mom, they’re normal people like anyone else. They just work at a carnival instead of in a store or something”. “Come down tomorrow and meet them yourself,” he said.

So the next day I went to the carnival. The twin brothers turned out to be Siamese (连体的) twins, joined at the chest. Tony didn’t think this fact was noteworthy enough to mention. When I brought it to him, he said, “Yes, I noticed that too. Do you know that their mom has to make all their clothes because it's so difficult to find anything to fit them? They’re also really good cooks. Today, Joe,the one on the right, made me spaghetti (意大利面条) for lunch.”

What others see first in a person is not what a child considers important. Where I saw Siamese twins, he saw people having difficulty buying clothes that fit, and young men who were good cooks. It was a lesson I have thought about many times over the years.

Are you happy? If you aren’t you need to move near friends who are happy. A new study shows that happiness is infectious (易传染的) and can flow through social groups. And the closer you are to someone happy, the happier you’ll be.

The study was carried out by the Harvard Medical School. The researchers discovered that a person’s happiness depends on the happiness of those around them. They collected data on 5,000 adults between 1971 and 2003. Participants were asked to identify their relatives, close friends, place of residence and place of work. They were also asked questions about whether they enjoyed life, and whether they felt hopeful about the future.

The results were very interesting. The researchers found that those who had happy partners had an 8% higher chance of being happy too. And for those with happy children, this increases to 14%. And finally, those with a happy friend who lives less than half a kilometre away are 42% more likely to be happy. “Most important from our perspective is the recognition that people are m social networks, and that the health and well-being of one person affects the health and well-being of others,” one of the researchers explained. “It makes sense that if people around you are happy, that might have an impact on your own happiness.” So, in conclusion, the best thing is to have a happy friend who lives less than a kilometer away from you. Do you have one?

Who needs friends? According to most psychologists, we all do, especially nowadays when so many other aspects（方面）of modern life are changing. It seems that having friends keeps us both healthy and happy.

The number of TV series about groups of friends shows just how important friendship is to us. Psychologist Dorothy Rowe says that many of us now turn to our friends, instead of our families, for advice, comfort and security. One woman named Rebecca she interviewed even told her that if she had got to choose between her husband and her friend, she would choose her friend.

Since our friends mean so much to us, it is not surprising that the happiest marriages are also friendships. “Once the romantic stage of a relationship has passed, it is friendship that holds people together,” says Rowe. If the couple do not make some change, they will either get tired of each other and break up or stay together and seek friendship with others.

But is friendship equally important to women and men? According to author Rhonda Pritchard, women are more likely than men to have close friends. “You tell a friend things that you'd never tell a partner”, says one woman she interviewed. For men, friendship is usually based on doing things together rather than the private conversations that are typical of women friend. Men share time and activities like building a fence or a business, running, riding a bike, fishing or watching football, but they don’t often share their feelings.

Although many women find their relationships with a husband or boyfriend is not enough, many men say that their partner is their best friend. Even women who are very happily married are likely to become very unhappy without a close friend and can even find the breakup of a close friend as painful as the end of a marriage.

Lasting friendships can provide a lot of the same support that families provided in the past, but the perfect situation is to have your family there for as well. Friendships and family relationships can both change, but a friend will not consider you when making really important decisions in the same way that a family member will.