What makes a life successful?

That is a question many a high school salutatorian and valedictorian expound upon each year.

From church pulpits, auditorium lecterns and football stadiums across the country, graduates opine with well-placed quotes and clichés about all they have been taught in school and how much more there is to learn in life.

But what is it that guarantees success in life?

Is it the facts and figures students learn in class? Is it the lessons learned in football, softball, track or other sports? What about those lessons learned outside the classroom — what role do they play?

In the late 1930s a group of researchers set out to answer these and other questions.

They selected as their subjects a young group of Harvard students — 268 young males who by all accounts were normal, well-adjusted college students. Smart, socially adept, wealthy, these men seemed headed for success.

Thinking about the future of our local students, I couldn’t help but think back to a recent essay called “What Makes Us Happy?” I read on the Web site www.theatlantic.com. This fascinating account by Joshua Wolf Shenk tells the story of this 70-year search for how to live well.

Scientists took note of every conceivable variable in these young men’s lives, including physical dimensions, psychological characteristics, and family histories. Doctors, anthropologists and sociologists were included in this exhaustive study — a study that continues today.

At the time they didn’t know that among the group would be a President of the United States and a leader of one of the nation’s prominent newspapers. That is what they hoped for: people seemingly destined for success. Of the 268, John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee are the standouts and the only two now known. The rest remain anonymous, but their lives are no less vivid.

A gifted young man ended up as a drifter, wandering through a world of drugs and psychosis. Another man, who at first lived a conventional life, ended up divorced twice and dying after a drunken fall down the stairs.

By the age of 50, almost a third of the group had at one time or another faced mental illness. Divorce, depression, drugs and alcohol were more the rule than the exception.

“Underneath the tweed jackets of these Harvard elites, beat troubled hearts,” Shenk writes.

For 42 years, George Valiant has been the director of this long-range study, whose results at first glance seem to be so varied as to as to defy comprehension.

Yet, Valliant sees some distinct factors that lead to successful aging. Surprisingly, these have little to do with money, power, intelligence and career choice.

Relationships are the key to success, he said.

The men’s relationships in their late 40s predicted success in later in life. Relationships with brothers and sisters proved especially beneficial. More than 90 percent of the men who thrived past 65 had been close to their siblings.

“The only thing that matters in life are your relationships to other people,” Valliant said in a recent interview.

To be sure there are many other factors to a life well-lived, but it is “social aptitude” that leads to a successful life, Valliant told Shenk.

So when this year’s graduates march down the aisle, may they remember it is not the speeches or diplomas that matter so much in the end. It is the hugs, the pats on the back and the struggle to stay connected to family and friends that may be the biggest key to their success.

Ben Hillyer is the Web editor of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3540 or ben.hillyer@natchezdemocrat.com.