CV NEWS FEED // One of the longest-running studies on adult humans, conducted by Harvard, found that positive relationships are crucial to being happy.
However, a successful surgeon who wrote about his journey to finding true happiness not through wealth, his mansion by the ocean, and his family, but primarily through faith in God, criticized the study, and argued that the study neglects to consider the fundamental role that faith has in most people’s lives.
Dr. John Sottosanti is the author of Mortal Adhesions: A Surgeon Battles the Seven Deadly Sins to Find Faith, Happiness, and Inner Peace, a book that tells the story of how he had “everything,” and yet was unhappy.
A recent email news release about Sottosanti’s response to the Harvard Study of Adult Development notes that Sottosanti himself only found happiness and peace after he began to read Scripture, attend religious retreats, and, primarily, “after he experienced a salvific miracle in the tomb of a medieval saint during a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in Spain.”
In the news release, Sottosanti said that the conclusion of the Harvard Study “essentially states that relationships are the key to happiness and that loneliness is bad for health. However, it fails to make a case for faith in a higher power and its fundamental role in the lives of most human beings.”
The Harvard Study of Adult Development started in 1938 and has since “followed the lives of more than 700 original participants and over 1,300 of their descendants,” according to the news release.
The study does acknowledge the unique solace that religious people can have when they experience times of stress, Sottosanti recognized. However, he later continued, “[t]he Harvard study misses that a relationship with Christ is the strongest and best one can have.”
Sottosanti noted that human relationships are affected by “[d]eath, divorce, unforgiveness, and a plethora of other reasons,” and can also be weakened by the digital world.
Even those who are not religious, Sottosanti argued, “know that religion creates an environment for lasting close friendships where people of faith believe in the same virtuous and ethical principles. Religious people meet weekly for worship, feed the poor, clothe the needy, and visit those in hospitals and prisons.”
Sottosanti later concluded, “Religion and spiritual fervor are antidotes to loneliness. Knowledge of God’s presence is available to us in the miraculous — big and small. He can be a confider, a constant companion, and a consoler when our needs are significant.”
