《Triumphs of Experience》
——Book review notes to me, to my daughters and to my loved ones.
Who’s who:
Grand Study: Harvard’s research followed 724 men over 80 years for their lives, with two cohorts, one group consists about 268 people from 6 Harvard classes, one group consists of 456 people from inner city of Boston.
George Vaillant: Author of this book. Third director of Grand Study.
Robert Waldinger: Author of another and popular book 《Good Life》. Forth and current director of Grand study.
(The four generation of directors of Grand Study focused on Physiology, Psychology, epidemiology and adaption, relationship and brain imaging, respectively.)
Erik Erikson: Psychologist, who’s theory proved to be aligned with Grand study data the best.
Why Harvard men only?
It is just like biologist choose one of the rare species to study a general pattern. This unique group has less noise.
Brief Story of some figures being studied and exampled:
No one likes to be studied in public by unknow audience, even with a pseudonym. Just that through their lives we could see our own.
Oliver Holmes, who came from a loving family, married happily and have bunch of intimate friends even in old age.
Sam Lovelace, who has bleak childhood, functioned ok in life all as “duties”, didn’t have courage to divorce her first alcoholic wife until her death, found love in second marriage and flourish in old age.
Charles Boatwright, a lifelong optimistic person who eventually got highest score in late Grand study. As he said, he stopped going to church, but he felt more Christian than before.
Peter Penn, who stopped growing in late teen, being unadventurous, barren for whole life.
Bill Dimaggio, inner city men who started as carpenter, ended with active and meaningful life, died early from heart attack.
Some Notes:
Mature Coping Mechanisms like Humor and patience tend to attract other people; immature coping mechanisms like projection and Hypochondriasis (occupied by one’s own illness and minor health problems), while temporarily soothing to their users, appear self-centered to other people and tend to alienate them.
At the end of WWII, some of the Grant study men were majors (Higher officer), others were still privates (lower officer). What made the difference? It turned out men’s attained military rank has no relation to their body build, their parents’ social class, their endurance on the treadmill, or even their intelligence. What did corelated significantly was a generally cohesive home atmosphere in childhood and warm relationships with mother and siblings.
Nurture trumps nature, at least for predicting late life success as the Decathlon (The ten categories being evaluated as happy in Grand study) embodied it.
What going right is more important than what goes wrong.
What goes right in the childhood predicts the future far better than what goes wrong.
Our longitudinal evidence makes clear that when mid- and late-life riches do accompany successfully old age, often they are not the result of the financial privilege in childhood or even other attributes usually considered key to success such as looks or extroverted personality. They are indirect fruit of childhood experience recalled as warm and intimate, for it is such childhood that give their best shot at learning to put their trust in life.
Religion must be taught be example rather than words.
The most independent and most social men in Grand study were the men who came from the most loving homes.
And the more at ease the men were with their feelings, the more successful they were at the rest of their lives.
The recent years of the Grand study have shown that our lives when we are old are the sum of all our loves.
You don’t need a Harvard’s degree, or even a high IQ, to grow up into a mensch.
Maturational transformation take place from within. They are the fruit of internalization and identification, not of instruction or even socialization. When internalization does not take place, one of our main avenues of growth foiled.
The death of parents may release fresh growth in adult life.
Maturity: The mature phrase of adult development is to be characterized by tolerance of ambiguity, reconciliation of inner conflict, and the ability to cherish another’s individuality while respecting interdependence.
Wisdom: The three components considered intrinsic to wisdom and essential to it: the cognitive capacity to grasp the deeper significance (both positive and negative) of transient phenomena; the reflective capacity to consider issues from multiple perspectives; the affective capacity to care deeply about well-being of others.
Marriage: Passive aggression is the coping technique most associated with bad marriage. Happy couple argue too, but every moment either one of was aimed at solving the problem itself, nothing attacks each other. Happy couple can be very different, but they are very close in what they like in life. Depending on each other is not a weakness, but an open door.
Marriage seems to work best when both parties can gratefully allow the other to bring then breakfast in bed.
I came as a surprise to me that bleak childhoods were not always associated with bleak marriage.
Father’s role is important or high related in the following 3 categories:
The degree to play or enjoy vacation.
Happiness in marriage.
Later year, it weighs more than mother’s role.
Eric Erickson’s model:
Who envision all of life as forward motion and growth, no declining as aging. Four stages of life: Identity, Intimacy (to peers), Generativity (get meaning of life and giving back); integrity. The people who stop growing usually stuck in previous stage.
Some Thoughts:
Love is the key to open life. Man has three opportunities to get the key: Once in childhood, love and loved by parents; once in marriage, learn love and to be loved; once when becoming parent, love and to learn to love their own child. Lucky men has more than one kind of love, but one kind of love is enough to develop life.
Choosing husband is choosing future father of your child. Choose the one from warm family, especially who is close to his father. The one who knows love, always thinks and says good thing about others. Practice mutual dependency and independence on purpose.
Be brave, choose to trust in life. ‘It is silly not to hope.’ as Hemingway said.
Mother’s role is proved to be much more important than father’s role, it is deeper and natural. Breast feeding is the first and one of the most important chances of love. We don’t even need data to say successful breast feeding brings closer relationship with mother and stronger growth later, since orality is the first way baby perceives the world.
Giving attention is good thing in parenting but cultivating selfishness consciously or unconsciously is diminishing degree of love you gave.
Good way of parenting of course is the best, but bad way of parenting is not the worst, the worst is ignorance.
You can’t change someone by changing his behavior, you can only change his heart. Bad behavior is never to be blamed, it should be hold, tolerant and eventually changed by its own. Never be a strict parent. Knowing child’s feeling is knowing his motivation, which matters but behavior does not really matter.
So many psychologists like Scott Peck in his book “The road less traveled” also proved in their studies that lifestyle, coping mechanism, view of life, view of this world from happy and healthy people is pretty similar to Christian, i.e. having a love community like church group, believe in love, always hope, not hiding sin or feel shameful from others, know love so can give love, generous in giving, not afraid of death and so on. Becoming a Christian will not take one away from happiness, it will draw you closer to happy life.
一句話總結，愛是開啟一切的鑰匙。
更多我的博客文章>>>
