They Seemed So Destined for Happiness

One question has nipped at the heels of this state-school graduate for nearly 30 years: How would I be different if I had been one of the privileged of the Ivy League?

I went to a school best known for the four students killed on its campus in 1970. I was the first in my family to go to college, so my going to Kent State was a big deal. It formed me in ways I still am discovering, and I am grateful to my bones for its impact.

But I always have wondered what my life would look like if I'd been one of those privileged kids who took it as a given that the world was theirs to change.

As a Yale graduate told me just last week at his 35th reunion, "I walked onto this campus thinking the world was my oyster, and I was never given any evidence to the contrary."

I smiled at this stranger and thought that such rarefied beginnings surely must build an archway to an even rarer happiness in life. Right?

A study at Harvard suggests the answer is sometimes yes but usually no. College has little to do with how you feel about your life at 50, and privilege only means you start out lucky. Happiness may hinge not on how well-known we are, but rather on how well anyone knows us at all. That's a gateway policed only by us, and woe to those who refuse ever to loosen the locks to the love that can save them.

For 72 years, since 1932, Harvard researchers have followed 268 men who started out there as the best of the best, even by Harvard standards. Every aspect of their beings — from drinking habits and physical activity to the height of their optimism and the length of their scrotums — was gauged and recorded as they leaned headfirst into the sweeping winds of change.

Through wars and careers, marriage and parenthood, divorce and aging, they were examined regularly and prodded to gauge the trajectories of their lives and the states of their minds. Roughly half still are living.

Journalist Joshua Wolf Shenk is the first journalist allowed to mine the rich contents of the Grant Study, and he has produced a spellbinding cover story in this month's Atlantic, titled "What Makes Us Happy?"

The greatest indicator of happiness may be our ability to sustain connections with others, writes the study's director, George Vaillant.

Consider this snippet from a recent interview with the 74-year-old Vaillant, who was asked what he had learned from the Grant Study men: "The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people." In a video interview, he insisted: "Happiness is love. Full stop."

So it's whom we love and how well we love them that whittles away at human longing? Might I suggest that most women already know this?

That's my only quibble with Shenk's piece. The "us" in the title is all men. Shenk had no control over who was studied, but how unsettling in 2009 to see my gender represented mostly in supporting — and sometimes dreadfully undermining — roles as wives and mothers.

Nevertheless, Shenk weaves a fascinating narrative about the lives of men whom many expected to lead charmed lives until they died. There are lessons here for all of us, and I found myself jotting down one insight after another:

By the age of 50, about a third of the men had struggled with mental illness. Themes of alcoholism and divorce were persistent narratives.

Regular physical exercise in college predicted their mental health later in life.

Pessimists suffered physically more than optimists, "perhaps because they're less likely to connect with others or care for themselves."

Altruism and humor were healthy defenses between the ages of 50 and 75. And, significantly for those of us who might envy their early advantages, it was hardship that often produced the most inspiring stories.

In the end, these men proved to be just as humbled by life as everyone else.

And just like with everyone else, happiness was most likely to come to those willing to unlock the gate and let love rush in.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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