“What Makes a Good Life” is a TED Talk given by Robert Waldinger about what makes us happy and healthy. Waldinger is a Harvard professor and a fourth generation researcher on a 75 year study. The study was conducted around men who attended Harvard and men who lived in the inner city part of Boston and start out in the lower class; it studies their relationships and how they correlate with health and happiness. He uses this study as evidence for his statement that good relationships are a major part of being happy and healthy. The men were found to be happier and healthier when they had a couple very close relationships rather than lots of distant relationships because it’s not about surrounding yourself with a lot of people but with those who you have deep connections with, whether its friends, family or a significant other.
I agree with Waldinger, that good relationships are a key factor in a happy and healthy life. The study conducted by Waldinger and previous Harvard researchers provides enough evidence to prove his claim and to draw the reader to also agree. In my experience with relationships with friends and family, I have found that I am much happier when I have a couple close relationships rather than many distant relationships. For example, when I was a freshman in high school I had a stage of having many friends that were mainly school friends but I didn’t have any best friends that I would spend time with outside of school. However, once I found those friends that I could become close with, they became my best friends and to this day in college we still talk almost everyday. My own experience helps me to agree with Waldinger because with these close relationships with my friends I am much happier and I don’t feel alone, and I think that having other people to relate to, especially in college, I feel less stressed, which benefits my health. However, I also slightly disagree that the evidence supports his claim because the study is gender limited. “For 75 years, we’ve tracked the lives of 724 men, year after year, asking about their work, their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories were going to turn out.” The fact that they only studied men makes it seem as though the results could have been different if they incorporated women into the study.