There’s a fantastic article by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the June 2009 issue of the The Atlantic that’s ostensibly about happiness, but is really about the history behind a lengthy psychological project known as the Grant Study. When I say lengthy, I mean qualifying for AARP, keeping your teeth in a cup next on your nightstand, yelling at kids to get off your lawn lengthy.
The researchers followed 268 men for 72 years and counting. Oh, and one of the guys in the study just happened to be JFK (which apparently is a big reveal in and of itself, but we don’t get anything really juicy in the article because his files are sealed until 2040–mark your calendars!). The piece is long, educational, completely engrossing and beautifully written. You will need to consult your dictionary at least once before you finish reading it. As a bonus, all the case studies address the subjects as “you” (a la the title of this post) which pulls you into the lives of all the men in really weird ways.
A few delightful excerpts and choice quotes to whet the appetite:
“They met in Mexico City, where she was the daughter of a prominent expatriate American banker and he was a hotshot archaeologist working on pre-Columbian Aztec digs.”
“…when we encounter a challenge large or small—a mother’s death or a broken shoelace—our defenses float us through the emotional swamp.”
“The study began in the spirit of laying lives out on a microscope slide. But it turned out that the lives were too big, too weird, too full of subtleties and contradictions to fit any easy conception of “successful living.” Arlie Bock had gone looking for binary conclusions—yeses and nos, dos and don’ts. But the enduring lessons would be paradoxical, not only on the substance of the men’s lives (the most inspiring triumphs were often studies in hardship) but also with respect to method: if it was to come to life, this cleaver-sharp science project would need the rounding influence of storytelling.”
Tags: awesome writing, cool, Inspiration