The Grace of Jimmy Carter

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The passing of former President Jimmy Carter on December 29, 2024, marks a milestone for the presidency as an institution. Carter’s legacy is wide-ranging, and tributes for the late president continue to build. President Biden noted that Carter “saved, lifted, and changed the lives of people all across the globe.”

Although not without his critics, Carter may perhaps be most remembered as the nation’s only centenarian ex-president, and many may wonder how he did so.

Living to one hundred is no easy feat. The Pew Research Center reports that centenarians numbered approximately 101,000 in 2024 and made up only 0.03 percent of the overall US population.

For years, psychological research focusing on healthy aging has asked what personality traits, individual characteristics, and behaviors correspond with and predict longer life expectancy. Some areas of consensus have emerged from this work. Social interaction and support are frequently cited as key to healthy aging, for example. In a 2024 study of results from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study, individuals with the highest self-reported social isolation were significantly less likely to live to age 100 compared with those with the highest social connection scores. Loneliness has known detrimental effects on physical health as well as mental health against which these social bonds may be protective.

Several fond remembrances have noted grace as part of Carter’s legacy. Vice-President Kamala Harris said of the late President Carter, “I will always remember his kindness, wisdom, and profound grace.” Former President Barack Obama shared that Carter “taught all of us what it means to live a life of grace, dignity, justice, and service.”

As a human quality, grace defies easy definition although many may find an inherent meaning in the word. Grace is often framed within a religious context and frequently melded with other human qualities such as mercy, gratitude, humility, and forgiveness. But the concept need not be attached to a particular faith. For example, a dancer’s performance may be described as graceful, or a “grace period” may be granted before formal repayment of a debt. Emmons and colleagues proposed a psychological definition of grace as “the gift of acceptance given unconditionally and voluntarily to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver.” Real-life examples may not come easily but are often profound and command respect. As a child, I remember the public response to then Pope John Paul II’s 1983 public act of forgiveness of his would-be assassin. Many were amazed, many were humbled, and some were thunderstruck by the late pontiff’s grace and ability to “let go.”

But does grace lead to a longer life? Widely considered a favorable—and even transcendent—human experience, the construct of grace lends itself to analyses of positive psychology. The hallmark "nun study" published in 2001 examined the writings of 180 Catholic nuns across their life spans beginning at a mean cohort age of 22 years. Across the lifespan, an inverse correlation between positive emotional content in these writings and mortality was apparent even after six decades of analysis. Some studies have shown that the experience and practice of grace are positively associated with age, although investigations remain sparse. However, analyses of mental health outcomes demonstrate that grace is also inversely correlated with the incidence of depression, shame, guilt, and hopelessness while positively correlated with an overall sense of mental well-being.

Nearly 20 years ago when graduating from medical school, my classmates nominated Jimmy Carter as our desired commencement speaker. As part of our student government, I conferred with our dean’s office to arrange the formal invitation. Regrettably, he declined due to other overlapping engagements but not before sending a response, a letter which I still have, expressing his disappointment for not being in attendance but also praise for the graduates as we embarked on our professional journeys of service. It was a small gesture, yet I was awestruck. We had never met. There was no obligation. He did not have to respond. And his encouraging words were all the more heartening for it.

President Carter’s advocacy and devotion to causes of high importance—including disease eradication in Africa, affordable housing, civil rights, and others—exemplify grace. A commitment to those he need not. An acceptance of those unknown. His countless years of service since leaving the White House provide a lesson on how discovering meaning and purpose through grace may also confer long life.

Thank you, Mr. President.