![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/81\/2012\/02\/Bob_Waldinger.jpeg\" "\\"Robert")
<\/a>The Harvard Gazette has just published a fascinating article on a long term study into the makings of a healthy life. In addition to the merits of the article itself, I\u2019m particularly interested as the project\u2019s director, Bob Waldinger, a friend who is also an old Zen hand, a Dharma<\/a> teacher with the Boundless Way Zen network and leader of the Zen meditation group at Mass General Hospital.<\/em><\/p>\nThe unsigned article begins:<\/p>\n
\u201cFor 74 years, one of the longest-running studies of normal adult development has been examining not disease and illness, but what may be life\u2019s magic question: How can you live long and happy?<\/p>\n
The answers that have emerged \u2014 and are still emerging \u2014 are surprising and obvious both. Having a difficult childhood, for example, matters a lot in early adulthood, but its effects fade as the years go by. Among those who had tough beginnings, self-starters who seek out jobs as kids do better than those who don\u2019t. And education \u2014 specifically going to college \u2014 is more important than money or social status in determining lifetime success.<\/p>\n
More recently, the study\u2019s aging subjects have shown that one\u2019s situation at age 50 has more to do with one\u2019s health and happiness at 70 than what happened earlier in life. And surprisingly, the quality of vacations younger in life \u2014 a measure of the ability to play \u2014 is a better indicator of late-life happiness than income.\u201d<\/p>\n