Each one of us, at any moment and at any stage of life, can embark on a search for “happiness.”
People spend their whole lives chasing money and fame, but true happiness only comes from good relationships with loved ones, as revealed by the longest-running study on human well-being ever conducted, spanning from 1938 to the present day. The study, described in the book “The Good Life” by Harvard professors Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, initially involved 724 participants and has since expanded to include over 1,300 of their descendants across three generations.
The book, consisting of approximately 350 pages and ten chapters, delves into what makes a good life, the importance of relationships, social skills, and the significance of connections with friends, family, and work.
Healthy and happy
The researchers began with a group of 268 socially privileged students from Harvard, one of the oldest and most influential universities in the world. They then added 456 boys from a disadvantaged area of Boston, who faced double discrimination due to poverty and their parents’ immigrant status, in order to compare their lives and discover what leads them on the right path.
The book examines the participants’ well-being from various angles, including brain scans, blood tests, and video recordings where they discuss their greatest concerns. The authors explain that they posed thousands of questions, conducted hundreds of measurements, and sent lengthy questionnaires every two years, resulting in a multitude of accumulated documentation spanning thousands of pages.
The findings of the research can be summarized by the conclusion that quality relationships contribute to people’s health and happiness, while loneliness has detrimental effects. However, the bitter truth is that people often struggle to understand what is truly good for them and mistakenly believe it will bring an end to all their problems.
“We are only human; we want a quick solution,” say the authors, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Waldinger, and psychologist Schulz. They further add that happiness is a feeling that our life is worthwhile and meaningful, suggesting that a more fitting term for it is well-being.
Making the decision to pursue well-being is not a one-time event but an ongoing choice that repeats from second to second, week to week, and year to year. They believe that each person should seek happiness for themselves.
Teaching children social skills can contribute to this pursuit, they conclude, emphasizing that every individual, at any given moment and at any stage of life, can embark on a search for “happiness.”
