My latest for The Wall Street Journal explores why the goal of longevity isn’t just to add years to life. It’s to add more life to those years.

A close friend of mine is in her 90s and she is one of the most alive people I know. For years we have gone on what she calls excursions together, to galleries and museums around New York.

After a visit to a Caspar David Friedrich exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she sent me a note. The day had been a difficult one, she wrote, and then she walked into those galleries and experienced “a major mood change which seemed beyond happiness.” She described the large seascape in its unforgettable blues, the watercolors of trees, the misty quality of the skies.

Of his painting “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,” Friedrich once said: “It reminds me how small I am, but also how miraculous this life is.” I think my friend would agree.

As a clinical psychiatrist, I often think about that experience when patients come to me asking about healthy aging. Nobody mentions visiting a museum. Instead, the conversation turns to the longevity industrial complex—biological-age testing, sleep scores, continuous glucose monitors, elaborate supplement stacks.

One patient came to me having tracked every metric imaginable—her glucose levels, her heart-rate variability, her biological age—and yet she couldn’t tell me the last time she had been genuinely excited about something. She was treating her body as a system to be fine-tuned and monitored. There is nothing wrong with that, but it isn’t the same as living a vital life.

A new study from University College London found that regular arts and cultural engagement—including visiting galleries, attending concerts, singing and dancing—slows biological aging at the same rate as physical exercise. People who engaged most frequently and across the widest variety of activities were roughly a year younger biologically than those who didn’t. According to the researchers, it is the first study to show arts engagement working at the epigenetic level. The lead author described it as the cultural equivalent of going to the gym.

What counts as arts engagement is broader than most people assume. It isn’t just visiting museums and attending concerts. On her 50th birthday, a patient decided to attend one arts event a week. A gallery opening, a play, a book reading—whatever caught her eye. Within months she told me she had noticed a tangible shift in her energy and mood.

Another, recently retired, signed up for ballroom-dancing classes at a community center and came back transformed, by the music, the other dancers and the pleasure of learning something new. A third joined a knitting club and found it was the best part of her week.

We already know that chronic stress takes years off our lives. Elevated cortisol raises the risk of heart disease, cognitive decline and accelerates biological aging. Engaging with the arts counters that damage in ways that are now measurable at the biological level.

The social aspect matters too. A study conducted at Manchester Art Gallery found that visitors who discussed what they were seeing with others left feeling more positive, more connected and closer to the people they came with. Modern life pulls us inward. Art pulls us back out toward beauty and toward each other.

The secret to longevity may be simpler than we think, and a lot more enjoyable. Visit a gallery, see a play, join a dance class, attend a book reading. Bring a friend and choose an activity that reminds you how miraculous life is.

New York is a city of strong opinions and limited patience. That is what made this month so strange. The Knicks championship win brought an unfamiliar feeling to the city. For a few days, it was overflowing with a sense of unity, kindness, and joy.

People in orange nodding at one another on the subway. Cashiers and customers talking like old friends about a fourth quarter they had each watched separately. People (meaning me) who could not have named a single starter a month earlier were suddenly weighing in about the rotation.

We have come together in the past for terrible things like September 11 and the early weeks of the pandemic when we leaned out our windows at seven each night to bang pots for the people in the hospitals. It is much rarer to feel that pull from something happy.

Sociologists call this shared joy collective effervescence. It’s the charge that runs through a group of people all feeling the same thing at the same moment. It is what happens when a crowd stops being a pile of strangers and becomes a single body. It occurs at concerts and parades and houses of worship, in the moment a whole room moves as one.

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A conversation about the World Cup on a recent episode of The Daily captured the essence of collective effervescence. The host, Natalie Kitroeff quoted Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, who spent much of his life writing about soccer and the people who love it. “The true fan never says, my team plays today,” Galeano wrote. “They say, we play today.” Kitroeff then mentioned how her own father, a lifelong soccer fan, expressed a similar sentiment. When the fan enters the stadium, her father used to say, the “I” becomes “we.” Being a fan makes us part of something bigger.

Researchers at Anglia Ruskin University studied 7,209 adults across England, aged 16 to 85, and found that attending live sports events improved wellbeing and decreased loneliness. Sports fans also reported a stronger sense that “life is worthwhile.” Sure it’s fun to switch on the TV and yell at the screen from the comfort of your own home, but being there makes it even better.

My friend Fernanda recently invited me to the US Open at Shinnecock Hills. I cannot pretend I arrived wondering what time we, meaning Rory McIlroy and I, were teeing off. But there was a wonderful feeling in the air of shared excitement and enthusiasm. I sat on the terrace with many others all leaning toward the same green, all of us silent for the same swing, all of us exhaling as the ball landed. I walked away grateful to have been there, and wanting to round up a few friends and go play, however badly.

Bottom Line: Whatever the game, the point holds. Everything is better when shared.

During the Boston Marathon, a runner named Ajay Haridasse collapsed about 1,000 feet from the finish line. Four times he tried to get up and four times he fell back down. And then someone stopped. Aaron Beggs, from Northern Ireland, looked at his watch, looked at Haridasse, and decided to help. Within moments, a second runner, Robson De Oliveira of Brazil, stopped too. Both men sacrificed their personal best times to carry a stranger across the finish line.

“Three strangers, three different countries, and we’ll have a story for the rest of our lives,” Beggs said afterward. “It’s nice to be nice.”

The video went viral. Millions watched it as if human decency were a rare and precious sighting. But what if it isn’t rare at all? What if we’ve just lost the ability to see it?

We Underestimate One Another

A recent Pew Research Center survey asked people in 25 countries to rate the morality and ethics of their fellow citizens. Americans were the most cynical of all: 53 percent described the people of their own country as somewhat or very morally bad. In Canada, that number was 7 percent.

Leanne ten Brinke, a psychology researcher who has spent two decades studying deception, distrust, and dark personality traits, makes this case directly in a recent Boston Globe essay. The data, she argues, says we’re wrong about our neighbors. In a study published in Science, researchers distributed 17,000 wallets containing cash to 355 cities across 40 countries. Everywhere, including in the United States, people went out of their way to return them — and the more money the wallet contained, the more likely people were to return it.

I find this both reassuring and a little heartbreaking. Kindness and decency are there, but keep getting drowned out by everything loud and awful competing for our attention. In my practice, I see this constantly. People surrounded by goodwill that they can’t quite bring themselves to trust. Why is this person being so nice? What’s the ulterior motive? What am I missing?

Perhaps the problem isn’t the world. It’s the story we tell ourselves about it.

The Stories We Live By

Psychologist Jamil Zaki at Stanford posed a question to thousands of college students: if you were having a hard time, would a classmate reach out to you? Most said no. Then he flipped the question and asked: would you reach out to a classmate who was struggling? Almost everyone said yes. He calls this the “empathy perception gap.” Put simply, we don’t have a kindness problem. We have a perception problem. People are ready and willing to show up for each other. They just don’t realize everyone else is too.

The good news is that it didn’t take much to reverse this pessimistic mindset. Zaki and his team created posters for residence halls with messages like “95% of Stanford students are likely to help others who are feeling down” and “85% of Stanford students enjoy meeting and becoming friends with students they don’t know.” Students who lived in dorms where the posters were displayed began seeing their peers differently and reported reaching out more — to someone they didn’t know, or sharing something vulnerable with a friend. Students who received app-based prompts to connect were nearly 90 percent more likely to step out of their comfort zones. As Zaki wrote of the project, “To help young people believe in one another, we didn’t need to lie to them. We just had to tell them the truth.”

Someone Has to Go First

This matters beyond college campuses. The same dynamic plays out everywhere, including in workplaces, neighborhoods, families, and on the subway. We hesitate to start a conversation, ask for help, or reach out to someone we’ve lost touch with, not because we don’t want to connect, but because we assume that the other person probably doesn’t.

Moreover, when we believe most people are selfish and morally bankrupt, we start behaving in ways that confirm it. We become more guarded, less generous, and less open. We invite the very dynamics we feared. People tend to rise or fall to our expectations of them. The point isn’t to pretend the world is perfect. It’s to stop pretending it’s worse than it is.

Helping Helps

The research on happiness keeps arriving at the same conclusion: the path to feeling better isn’t inward, it’s outward.

Believing in other people’s goodness doesn’t just change how we see them. It changes how we show up ourselves.

Cornell psychologist Anthony Burrow tested this directly with his Contribution Project: he gave more than 1,200 high school and college students $400 to use however they wished to benefit themselves or others. Most chose to help others. Some paid for strangers’ laundry. Some donated books to their old schools. Some planted trees. Eight weeks later, the students who had received the funds scored significantly higher than those who hadn’t on every measure: wellbeing, sense of purpose, sense of belonging, feeling needed and useful. What Burrow found challenges what we assume about generosity. All too often, we think of giving as something that costs us. His research suggests it’s actually what fulfills us.

Which brings us back to the Boston Marathon and three strangers from three different countries who will have a story for the rest of their lives. It’s nice to be nice. The evidence suggests that most people already know this. We just keep forgetting to trust that the person next to us does too.

As a psychiatrist, I spend a surprising amount of time helping people unlearn things.

Not because they aren’t smart or capable, but because many of the messages we absorb about adulthood, happiness, identity, and success sound wise yet ultimately make us more anxious, isolated, and discouraged.

This past weekend, I had the honor of delivering the commencement address at Millbrook School, where my daughter Vivian was among the graduates. As any parent of a teenager knows, public speaking is one thing. Public speaking while trying not to mortify your child is quite another.

So rather than offering graduates a blueprint for success, I wanted to challenge a few of the misleading messages young people are absorbing right now: that adulthood means “finding yourself,” that happiness comes entirely from within, and that the world is fundamentally dark and untrustworthy.

More than anything, I hoped to remind students of something easy to overlook in a culture obsessed with achievement: that goodness matters just as much as greatness.

Below is my speech in full.

Millbrook School Commencement Address, May 2026

It’s an honor to be speaking to you on this happy occasion. Along with happiness, I feel a wave of pride. And perhaps some relief—from parents…teachers…school staff, and administrators, especially Ms. Birnbaum. I sense a lot of relief from Ms. Birnbaum.

And of course from the graduates. So much has happened since you drove down School Road for the first time. You have grown literally. And you have grown intellectually. You have deepened your knowledge of world history, conquered chemistry. And your mastery of Zaddy language has expanded in ways that your teachers find alarming. But something deeper has happened here. Something harder to name and more important than any grade or trophy or title. You have also grown psychologically. And I’d like to focus on some Millbrook traditions that also deserve some credit. Traditions like marsh-mucking which taught you to face your fears. Sitting down for formal dinners on Thursday nights with faculty and fellow students. Nominating people for Kind Bars, or maybe even being the recipient of one yourself. And dancing your hearts out over Winter Weekend for those airband performances, where you learned how to get comfortable getting awkward. And some of you got really really comfortable getting awkward.

At Millbrook, you have been known and needed. Perhaps more known and needed than you hoped for at times? And you’ve made others feel known and needed, too. This is one of the reasons that my husband Aby and I chose Millbrook for Baker and Vivian. Because Millbrook truly embraces the philosophy that goodness matters as much as greatness. And while it’s important to strive for greatness in life, I assure you that it is goodness that makes life worth living. And when I say goodness, I mean the everyday kind. How you treat people when nothing is at stake. What you do when no one is watching.

The world however has other ideas. As a psychiatrist, I spend a lot of time helping people unlearn things. So, as your shrink for the next ten minutes, I want to save you some time, and perhaps some therapy bills, by addressing three misleading messages that are flooding your feed right now. You’ve probably already heard everything I am going to say from your parents. I have the advantage of not being them (Sorry, Vivian, doing my best not to make you cringe.) And let’s be honest, you’d probably trust me more if I had two million followers and a ring light.

Misleading message #1: Becoming an adult means figuring out who you are and what you want.

You are always in the process of becoming. In fact, there is evidence that our personality changes so much from youth to old age that, you can look like a completely different person at age 14 than you do at 77! So, when someone tells you to “Stay in your lane,” you don’t have to. Veer all you want. You get to decide what your lane is. You get to draw it, define it, or abandon it entirely. Just please use your blinker.

And when you find yourself at a fork in the road, ask yourself: which road bends toward goodness? Take that one. While you may not be anywhere near School Road, you can always find your way back to what it stands for. To quote the great philosopher Taylor Swift in her treatise “Dear Reader”: “If you don’t recognize yourself. That means you did it right.”

Misleading message #2: Happiness comes from within.

Cherish these friendships even as you make new ones. Because life gets busy—it just does. Here’s a little secret: good friendships don’t just happen. They need tending. Cultivate them like a garden. School Road is smoothly paved but the road ahead may not always be. And it will be your friends—not your therapist—who will carry you through.

Misleading message #3: The world is a dark place full of terrible people.

The problem with catastrophizing is that it’s self-fulfilling. What we pay attention to determines what we find. So choose carefully. Look for what’s good. And I say this with love: you will need to look up from your phone to do this. There is so much more to life than hunting for what’s wrong and fixating on the problems. The world is also full of wonder and beauty. You just have to be looking in the right direction.

There’s a show on Broadway right now called Every Brilliant Thing—the premise is simple: make a list of all the ordinary beautiful things that make you glad to be alive. There is so much on your list already. A few seniors told me theirs: seeing the chapel steeple from the top of School Road, sundaes on Sunday, hackysack on the quad, trying to figure out who the Case Screamer is…And the best way to keep that list growing? Assume the best in the people. Give them the benefit of the doubt before you give them the side eye.

Too often we underestimate how kind and caring people are. Researchers asked college students: “If you were struggling, would a classmate reach out to help?” Most said…no. But when asked, “Would you reach out to help someone else?” almost everyone said yes. They called it the empathy gap. So contrary to what TikTok tells you, for the most part, people are good.

I promise that if you bend toward goodness… goodness will bend toward you.

Oh, and one more thing. Please thank the people who got you here. The teachers, the coaches, the dorm parents—the ones who showed up for you every single day, often in ways you never noticed. And your family. The ones who sent care packages, cheered from the sidelines, proofread your essays before ChatGPT came along, and pretended not to cry at drop-off. The ones who have worried about you, believed in you, and loved you into being.

Someone once said that the decision to have a child means to forever have your heart go walking around outside your body. Knowing that you were walking around Millbrook made it a little easier for us. We knew our hearts were in a good place.

So graduates, as you go off to college, we are bracing ourselves, too. I think I speak for every parent here when I say… when we call, please just answer the phone. And don’t leave us on “read” when we text. And don’t start texting back so we see those three dots blinking and then suddenly stop. And enough with those ominous texts that just say “Mom” and nothing else. When we get those and there’s no follow up, we assume you’re in jail.

Today, it may feel like your Millbrook era is drawing to a close, but the truth is, you’re going to be marsh mucking your entire life. That means meeting challenges. Gaining knowledge. Being uncomfortable at times. And laughing with your friends even when you’re deep in the mud.

And when you return to Millbrook for your 5th–or 50th–reunion, I guarantee that what will make you happiest is not just the greatness that you have achieved, but the goodness you’ve put into the world.

I have watched this class from the sidelines for four years, and what I can tell you—as a psychiatrist, as a mom, as someone who has been paying attention—is that you are a good group of people, genuinely good. And the world needs what you have to offer. Not just your talent or your ambition—your goodness. It needs that most of all.

So this is it. No more storytime with Mr. Downs. Now it’s time to write your own stories! May there be goodness on every page. Congratulations!