The Harvard Study of Adult Development  lead to a book called  “The Good Life” and the study concludes, “What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships.”

This strikes me as a bit odd, as people have known this for millennia.  As it says in  “The Shack,” “It’s all about relationships.”  And in Buddhist teachings, we have the following:

Once the Buddha’s disciple Ananda asked him about friendship. Ananda knew that having good and encouraging friends was very important for the path. He even wondered whether having good friends is half the path.

“No, Ananda,” the Buddha told him, “having good friends isn’t half of the Holy Life. Having good friends is the whole of the Holy Life.”

Source: Lion’s Roar   also in  Fake Buddha Quotes  as a mistranslation.

It’s nice to have ancient wisdom confirmed by empirical data, but it’s also nice to know that this has been common knowledge for thousands of years.