ShareThisJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy was among the most examined men of the 20th century even before he became a war hero, congressman, senator and president of the United States. It began in the late 1930s just a year after he entered Harvard as an undergraduate.
Kennedy happened to be chosen by Harvard researchers, along with 267 other sophomores, to be scrutinized in a longitudinal study of human development.
All those chosen were bright, sophisticated, ambitious, and well-adjusted, and came from affluent families. As columnist David Brooks expresses it, even as college students they already appeared to "have it made" for future success in life.
What researchers wanted to know was whether they would live up to their early promise. To that end they were tracked every year through college, war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood, grandparenthood and into old age.
After he was assassinated, Kennedy was no longer part of the study. But about half of the original men in the group are still alive in their late 80s. Through all these years the men have been examined medically, psychologically, and socially, sat for interviews and responded to detailed questionnaires about the most intimate parts of their lives.
The 268 young men in the Harvard study were already leading successful, happy lives, so researchers scrutinized their development over the years to test whether they would fulfill their promise to be happy.
Some did, but not all. The study's originator hoped that his study of successful young men would ease "the disharmony of the world at large" and yield lessons to make all people happier. By the time the men were in their 40s, four of them had run for the Senate, one became a member of the Cabinet, another a best-selling novelist and Kennedy was elected president. Another subject of the study, Ben Bradlee, became editor of The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal.
The story of these men is told in The Atlantic by Joshua Wolfshank. He reveals, "Hidden among the shimmering successes were darker hues. As early as 1948, 20 members of the group displayed severe psychiatric difficulties. By age 50, almost a third of the men had at one time met (the project director's) criteria for mental illness."
The key to "success" seems to be how each man responded to the troubles in his life. By the time the men retired, the study had identified seven factors that predicted a healthy and happy old age: mature adaptation, education, stable marriage, no smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise and healthy weight. Of the 106 men who possessed these traits at age 50, half ended up at 80 as "happy-well."
I concur with David Brooks' conclusion that "there is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stands mute," but would add that God knows each of us better than we know ourselves and can help us to overcome whatever the world throws at us.
David Yount's latest book is "Celebrating the Single Life: Keys to a Successful Life on Your Own" (Praeger). E-mail him at dyount31(at)verizon.net
AMAZING GRACE
