The men were the subject of one of the century’s most fascinating longitudinal studies. They were selected when they were [Harvard] sophomores, and they have been probed, poked and measured ever since. Researchers visited their homes and investigated everything from early bed-wetting episodes to their body dimensions.
The results from the study, known as the Grant Study, have surfaced periodically in the years since. But they’ve never been so brilliantly captured as they are in an essay called “What Makes Us Happy?” by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the forthcoming issue of The Atlantic….
Even when we know something, it is hard to make it so. Reading this essay, I had the same sense I had while reading Christopher Buckley’s description of his parents in The Times Magazine not long ago. There is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stands mute.
“Happiness is love. Full Stop,” says the researcher. There’s potentially rich resonance with last Sunday’s epistle (this coming Sunday, if anyone’s still on the BCP lectionary rather than the RCL). Worth some reflection if you’re preaching to a congregation whose interest would be piqued by this sort of thing.
Fascinating reading. I followed the link and read the full article at the Atlantic monthly:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness
I remember discussing this study quite a bit when I was studying for my Masters in Public Health back in the mid-80s. It’s interesting to see how it’s evolved in the last 20 years and the conclusions the researchers are drawing.
It’s also of particular interest to me as my father was just a few years younger than these men and of similar background, (though he went to an EVEN BETTER university – Princeton! (wink)) I see some of his life in some of these case studies and really related to what some of these men experienced and how they reacted.
Well worth the time to read.