What are You Really Searching For? Lessons from “The Search” Series
The Search is a seven-part video series produced by the Augustine Institute and hosted by Catholic speaker Chris Stefanick. The series explores life’s deepest questions through conversations with experts from science, medicine, psychology, art, and religion. The opening question captures the human condition precisely: “What do you seek?”
This question defines the restlessness that characterizes human experience. People search for something, but they’re often looking in the wrong places. Until they understand what they’re truly seeking, and where to find it, they remain perpetually unsatisfied, chasing one thing after another in an attempt to fill the void.
The Harvard Study Reveals a Fundamental Truth
The Harvard Study of Adult Development - the longest-running scientific examination of human happiness ever conducted - has followed over 700 individuals for more than 85 years, from adolescence into their 80s and 90s. Researchers collected comprehensive data on every aspect of participants’ lives: IQ scores, socioeconomic status, career achievement, financial success, exercise habits, diet, genetics, medical exams, psychological assessments, in-depth interviews, even brain scans.
The research sought to answer: What makes a good life? What leads to lasting happiness and health?
After eight decades of rigorous study, the finding is remarkably clear and consistent: The quality of relationships is the single most important predictor of happiness and health throughout life. Not wealth. Not fame. Not career success. Not even IQ or genetic advantages. Relationships. As Dr. Robert Waldinger, the current director, explains: “The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.” Those with warm, close relationships lived longer, experienced less cognitive decline, maintained better physical health, and reported significantly higher life satisfaction. Meanwhile, loneliness and isolation proved as damaging to health as smoking or alcoholism.
George Vaillant, who directed the study for three decades, summarized the findings succinctly: “Happiness is love. Full stop.” This isn’t sentiment, it’s empirical science demonstrating what has been suspected for millennia. Human beings are hardwired for relationship. Connection isn’t merely desirable; it’s necessary for survival and flourishing.
The Problem of Destination Addiction
If relationships are so crucial to happiness, why do so many people struggle to find fulfillment? Why does the search continue in the wrong places The concept of “destination addiction” describes the belief that happiness exists in the next achievement, the next purchase, the next milestone. “Happiness will come when that promotion arrives.” “Satisfaction will follow weight loss.” “Life will improve with a new house, relationship, or accomplishment.” This addiction to future destinations operates on a predictable cycle. One goal gets accomplished, bringing a brief surge of satisfaction, then the next destination immediately emerges. The cycle perpetuates endlessly. The destination keeps moving.
This pattern has devastating psychological consequences. It prevents present gratitude and contentment. It generates chronic anxiety and restlessness. It keeps people perpetually dissatisfied, always striving, never arriving. Most tragically, it causes sacrifice of relationships, the very thing research proves produces happiness, in pursuit of achievements that ultimately leave people empty.
The Harvard study makes this painfully clear. Participants who prioritized career success and financial achievement over relationships often ended up lonely, unhealthy, and deeply regretful. Meanwhile, those who invested in relationships, even with more modest careers or less impressive wealth, reported significantly higher life satisfaction and experienced better health outcomes. Searches for happiness through achievements and possessions are fundamentally misguided. Those pursuits might provide temporary pleasure, but they cannot produce lasting fulfillment. Only relationships accomplish that.
Made by Relationship, For Relationship
Why are relationships so central to human flourishing? The Harvard study reveals the empirical reality, but Catholic theology explains the deeper reason: humans are made by relationship, for relationship. This isn’t just beneficial happenstance, it’s an ontological reality rooted in the very nature of God Himself. God is Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The nature of God is relationship. God is not a solitary being who occasionally relates to creation. God is, in His very essence, an eternal communion of love. The three persons of the Trinity exist in perfect relationship, each giving themselves completely to the others in an endless exchange of love.
Humans are made in that image. Genesis 1:27 states that God created humanity in His image and likeness. If God is Trinity, if God is relationship, then being made in God’s image means humans are inherently relational. The capacity for love, friendship, self-gift, and communion isn’t accidental, it’s the fundamental truth of human nature. Humans are made by relationship; Not only physically through the union of mother and father but ontologically as well. A Trinitarian God who is Himself relationship created humans in His relational image. Humans bear the imprint of the Trinity at the deepest level of existence.
And humans are made for relationship. The ultimate purpose, the telos, is union with God and communion with others. The entire arc of salvation history represents God pursuing relationship with humanity. Creation, covenant, incarnation, and redemption all constitute God’s love story; His relentless pursuit of humanity. The ultimate destiny is relationship: eternal life understood not as endless existence but as union with God and communion with the saints. Heaven is relationship. The Beatific Vision is relationship. The fulfillment of all human longing is relationship with God and others. Every desire for connection, every longing for belonging, every ache for intimacy points toward the ultimate purpose: communion with Love Himself.
This explains why the Harvard study finds what it finds. Science is discovering empirically what theology has taught for centuries: humans are relational beings designed for communion, and they cannot flourish apart from relationship. When happiness gets sought in isolation, achievement, or self-sufficiency, the effort works against human nature itself.
The Search Reveals the Answer
The Search series explores this reality across seven episodes. Episode 1 asks “What do you seek?” and examines universal human longing. Episode 2 explores “Who am I?” revealing that humans are both material and spiritual. Episode 3 makes the case for God’s existence. Episode 4 presents “The Story” explores how human lives fit into the grand narrative of God’s pursuit of humanity. Episode 5 focuses on Jesus Christ, whose life reveals the depths of God’s love. Episode 6 addresses “Am I Good Enough?”, exploring the question of mercy and unconditional love. Episode 7 examines “Why the Church?” and how Christ is encountered through the Body of Christ.
The convergence between psychological research and Catholic theology is remarkable. The Harvard study reveals the empirical reality of the human need for relationship. Trinitarian theology reveals why that need exists. When people chase achievements and possessions while neglecting relationships, they’re not just making a strategic mistake. They’re violating their own nature. They’re living as if made for something other than what they actually were made for. The result is predictable: emptiness, restlessness, perpetual dissatisfaction.
St. Augustine captured this centuries before modern psychology: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” Humans are searching for God, whether they realize it or not. Every search for meaning, every longing for connection, every desire for love is ultimately a search for the Source of all meaning, connection, and love.
Implications for Catholic Formation
This understanding has profound implications for forming Catholics, especially young people. If human flourishing depends fundamentally on relationships, then formation programs must prioritize relationship-building rather than just information transfer.
Formation needs to assess not just what students know but how they relate - to God, to others, to themselves. It needs to form them in the skills and virtues that enable healthy relationships: empathy, vulnerability, forgiveness, communication, self-gift. It needs to create communities where authentic connection happens, not just programs where content gets delivered. Formation that focuses exclusively on knowledge while ignoring relational capacity misunderstands human nature. Students can memorize the entire Catechism, but if they haven’t learned how to love, they haven’t learned what matters most. As St. Paul wrote, “If I have all knowledge but have not love, I am nothing.”
This doesn’t mean knowledge is unimportant. Knowledge must serve love. Theology should deepen relationship with God. Moral teaching should help in loving others better. Spiritual formation should cultivate capacity for communion. Everything should be ordered toward the fundamental reality of who humans are: relational beings made in the image of a relational God.
The Answer to “What Do You Seek?”
The Search begins with Jesus’ first words in the Gospel of John: “What do you seek?” It’s the question Christ poses to humanity at the start of His public ministry. The entire series demonstrates that He’s not just asking the question; He is the answer. What are people seeking? Happiness exists in relationship with God and others. Meaning emerges when lives participate in God’s love story. Healing comes when Christ enters human brokenness to transform from within. Peace flows from knowing unconditional love. Community is found in the Church as the family of God.
Every search leads back to Christ. Every longing points toward Love Himself. The destination addiction that keeps people perpetually restless dissolves when they encounter the One who satisfies every human desire. This is why integrating psychological research with Catholic theology is so valuable. They’re not competing narratives, they’re complementary revelations of the same truth. Science discovers empirically what faith knows theologically: humans are made for communion, and nothing less will satisfy.
The Harvard study has spent 85 years proving what the Church has taught for 2,000 years: love is everything. Relationship is everything. God is love, and humans made in His image are made for love. When lives are lived accordingly - prioritizing relationships over achievements, communion over isolation, love over self-sufficiency - humans flourish. When they don’t, they suffer. The search for happiness ends when the chase for destinations stops and relationship gets embraced; when the attempt at self-sufficiency ends and the need for connection gets accepted; when Christ is encountered, revealing both who humans are and what they were made for.
Humans are made by relationship, for relationship. The Harvard study proves it. Catholic theology reveals it. Human experience confirms it. The restlessness, the dissatisfaction with achievement after achievement, it all points toward the truth of human nature and human need.
The search ends when Love Himself is found. And the beautiful truth is, He’s been searching for humanity all along.
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About The Search: The Search is a seven-episode video series produced by Augustine Institute Studios and hosted by Chris Stefanick. Available on FORMED and through Catholic Market. Learn more at augustineinstitute.org/the-search.