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Kaye 1 Alexander Kaye Professor Helo ENC 1101 17 September 2023 Writing Assignment 1 What is the key to living a healthy and extended life? Research suggests that happiness may play a pivotal role. To many, however, that poses that poses yet another question: What then, is the secret to long-term happiness? These are questions that Robert Waldinger, an educator at Havard, tries to answer in his 2015 speech entitled “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons From the Longest Study on Happiness”. Through this speech, Waldinger details the findings and key takeaways - as related to happiness and longevity of life - of an ongoing, and at that point 75-year-long, study by Harvard on adult life. The information presented by Waldinger can best be broken down into three distinct parts. The first part consists of an explanation of how the study was conducted and what it entailed, such as how its foundation lay in following the lives of 724 men over the course of the study and gathering information on their personal lives and health. The second part offers an examination of the role personal relationships played in the lives of participants who had lived the longest and reported being most happy. The third and final part suggests ways that the study’s teachings could be implemented into our daily lives and barriers there to. Waldinger begins with an in-depth explanation of how the study was run and its history. Formally titled The Harvard Study of Adult Development, the study began in 1938. The study followed the lives of groups of young men from two very different walks of life. The first group was comprised of Havard Sophomores and the second group consisted of men from the most economically downtrodden communities of Boston. Waldinger explains, “The first group started in the study when they were sophomores at Harvard College… the second group that [we] followed was a group of boys from Boston’s poorest neighborhoods”. (Waldinger 03:03) At the onset of the study each of the participants was medically examined and interviewed. Waldinger also detailed some of the study’s findings pertaining to the social mobility and careers of participants. He reports “They became factory workers and lawyers and

Kaye 2 bricklayers and doctors, one President of the United States… Some climbed the social ladder from the bottom all the way to the very top, and some made that journey in the opposite direction.” (Waldinger 03:42) Waldinger goes on to discuss the way that the team would collect information on the men, starting by saying “Every two years, our… research staff calls up our men and asks them if we can send them yet one more set of questions about their lives.” (Waldinger 04:23) He proceeds to elaborate on this matter describing how the interviewing process is designed to make those being interviewed feel as comfortable as possible, and how medical information is collected, and even how after time the wives were incorporated into the study, saying “To get the clearest picture of [the participants’] lives, we don’t just send them questionnaires. We interview them in their living rooms. We get their medical records from their doctors. We draw their blood, we scan their brains, we talk to their children. We videotape them talking with their wives about their deepest concerns. And when, about a decade ago, we finally asked the wives if they would join us as members of the study, many of the women said, ‘You know, it’s about time’”. (05:08) After discussing the process of conducting the study Waldinger goes on to explain the link between close relationships, health, and happiness. To begin said explanation Waldinger reveals what he and the researchers believe to be the key takeaway from the study: “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.” (Waldinger 05:39) He continues to expand upon this point by describing three major teachings from the study. The first teaching he offers regards the benefit of relationships and the possible consequences from the lack thereof, he remarks “social connections are really good for us, and… loneliness kills”. For the second teaching, Waldinger explains that the quantity of relationships does not have nearly as much of an impact on health and happiness as the quality and closeness of said relationship(s). (Waldinger 07:07) He explains that the level of satisfaction an individual felt with their relationships midway through their life served as the best indicator the researchers could find as to the future health of the participants as they got older saying “Once we had followed our men all the way into their 80s, we wanted to look back at them and see if we could predict who was going to grow into a happy, healthy octogenarian and who wasn’t… it wasn’t their middle age cholesterol levels that predicted

Kaye 3 how they were going to grow old. It was how satisfied they were in their relationships… at age 50”. Not only did the study show that close relationships are broadly healthy for us and an accurate predictor of our health as we age, but on a related note, the study found a particular connection between such relationships and the way individuals cope with and experience the hardships of old age with Waldinger going on to say “ And good, close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old. Our most happily partnered men and women reported, in their 80s, that on the days when they had more physical pain, their mood stayed just as happy. But the people who were in unhappy relationships, on the days when they reported more physical pain, it was magnified by more emotional pain.” (Waldinger 07:45) For the third and final teaching from the study, Waldinger details the role that close personal relationships, such as marriage, play in keeping our memory strong into our golden years, saying “people who are in relationships where they feel they can count on the other person in times of need [have memories that] stay sharper longer.” (Waldinger 08:52) The final topic Waldinger discusses in his speech is the apprehension many people face to heeding these teachings such as the difficulty of maintaining healthy person relationships. He begins this dialogue by acknowledging “Relationships are messy and they're complicated and the hard work of tending to family and friends, it's not sexy or glamorous. It's also lifelong. It never ends.” However, Waldinger responds to this by again restating his central claim that “over and over, over these 75 years, our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned in to relationships, with family, with friends, with community” (Waldinger 09:49). Lastly, he notes the infinite ways that close personal relationships can be forged or strengthened and even provides a couple of suggestions for doing so saying “What might leaning [into] relationships even look like? Well, the possibilities are practically endless. It might be something as simple as replacing screen time with people time or livening up a stale relationship by doing something new together, long walks or date nights, or reaching out to that family member who you haven't spoken to in years, because those all-too-common family feuds take a terrible toll on the people who hold the grudges.” (Waldinger 11:19) So, again I ask, what is the secret to long-term happiness and a long and healthy life? With the

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