Joseph Heller’s satirical novel Catch-22 has a memorable character, Dunbar, who intentionally cultivates boredom, reasoning that a life that feels long is just as good as a life that actually is long. It’s true that boredom makes time crawl, but it’s hard to imagine a better illustration of why longevity doesn’t make much sense as a goal all by itself. What we aspire to is not just a long life, but a long, good life. With that in mind, I was curious to see what modern research has to say about longevity and staying mentally and physically healthy. What I found was reassuring: apparently the long life and the good life are tightly woven together.