From “Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most” by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Long, happy, healthy: it’s the slogan for a peculiarly modern vision of a life worth living.
The world’s great traditions don’t endorse a “long, happy, healthy: life without qualification. Neither do billions of followers of Buddha, Jesus, the Hindu sages, or the prophet Muhammad around the world today. In fact, these traditions problematize many components of the Walgreens vision. Why, then, is it so popular?
For one thing, “long, happy, healthy” is pitched to us incessantly. It comes to us from doctors, from well-meaning friends, from profit-seeking advertisers – perhaps most of all from psychologists. It’s the vision commended in the pages of The New York Times and championed by the burgeoning “wellness” industry (now estimated to be worth $1.5 trillion globally). Read the latest wellness listicle online, or consult the most recent psychological study, and there it is, lurking without ever being articulated: the long, happy, healthy life. This is the vision that counts as wisdom in comparison to the unreflective impulses that dominate so much of our culture.
We’re not sure we know how to get this life. But that’s where psychology, behavioral economics, life hacks, and countless consumer goods come in. The “long, happy, healthy” industry doesn’t just help us find our way to its vision of the good life. It also keeps us from considering whether this is the life worth wanting for ourselves, our communities, and the world. It’s difficult to pause and consider the merits of this vision when we’re so busy chasing after it.