The study couldn’t say why. But Thomas thought he could. “I believe that the difference in death rates can be traced to the fundamental human need for a reason to live.” And other research was consistent with this conclusion. In the early 1970s, the psychologists Judith Rodin and Ellen Langer performed an experiment in which they got a Connecticut nursing home to give each of its residents a plant. Half of them were assigned the job of watering their plant and attended a lecture on the benefits of taking on responsibilities in their lives. The other half had their plant watered for them and attended a lecture on how the staff was responsible for their well-being. After a year and a half, the group encouraged to take more responsibility—even for such a small thing as a plant—proved more active and alert and appeared to live longer.
In his book, Thomas recounted the story of a man he called Mr. L. Three months before he was admitted to the nursing home, his wife of more than sixty years died. He lost interest in eating, and his children had to help him with his daily needs more and more. Then he crashed his car into a ditch, and the police raised the possibility of its having been a suicide attempt. After Mr. L.’s discharge from the hospital, the family placed him at Chase.
Thomas recalled meeting him. “I wondered how this man had survived at all. Events of the past three months had shattered his world. He had lost his wife, his home, his freedom, and perhaps worst of all, his sense that his continued existence meant something. The joy of life was gone for him.”
At the nursing home, despite antidepressant medications and efforts to encourage him, he spiraled downward. He gave up walking. He confined himself to bed. He refused to eat. Around this time, however, the new program started, and he was offered a pair of parakeets.
“He agreed, with the indifference of a person who knows he will soon be gone,” Thomas said. But he began to change. “The changes were subtle at first. Mr. L. would position himself in bed so that he could watch the activities of his new charges.” He began to advise the staff who came to care for his birds about what they liked and how they were doing. The birds were drawing him out. For Thomas, it was the perfect demonstration of his theory about what living things provide. In place of boredom, they offer spontaneity. In place of loneliness, they offer companionship. In place of helplessness, they offer a chance to take care of another being.
“[Mr. L.] began eating again, dressing himself, and getting out of his room,” Thomas reported. “The dogs needed a walk every afternoon, and he let us know he was the man for the job.” Three months later, he moved out and back into his home. Thomas is convinced the program saved his life.
Whether it did or didn’t may be beside the point. The most important finding of Thomas’s experiment wasn’t that having a reason to live could reduce death rates for the disabled elderly. The most important finding was that it is possible to provide them with reasons to live, period. Even residents with dementia so severe that they had lost the ability to grasp much of what was going on could experience a life with greater meaning and pleasure and satisfaction. It is much harder to measure how much more worth people find in being alive than how many fewer drugs they depend on or how much longer they can live. But could anything matter more?
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IN 1908, A Harvard philosopher named Josiah Royce wrote a book with the title The Philosophy of Loyalty. Royce was not concerned with the trials of aging. But he was concerned with a puzzle that is fundamental to anyone contemplating his or her mortality. Royce wanted to understand why simply existing—why being merely housed and fed and safe and alive—seems empty and meaningless to us. What more is it that we need in order to feel that life is worthwhile?
The answer, he believed, is that we all seek a cause beyond ourselves. This was, to him, an intrinsic human need. The cause could be large (family, country, principle) or small (a building project, the care of a pet). The important thing was that, in ascribing value to the cause and seeing it as worth making sacrifices for, we give our lives meaning.
Royce called this dedication to a cause beyond oneself loyalty. He regarded it as the opposite of individualism. The individualist puts self-interest first, seeing his own pain, pleasure, and existence as his greatest concern. For an individualist, loyalty to causes that have nothing to do with self-interest is strange. When such loyalty encourages self-sacrifice, it can even be alarming—a mistaken and irrational tendency that leaves people open to the exploitation of tyrants. Nothing could matter more than self-interest, and because when you die you are gone, self-sacrifice makes no sense.