Brooks opened his address with research-based observations about happiness, deliberately starting with the things graduates should not worry about. This line — delivered with comic timing — distilled volumes of happiness research into four words of actionable advice. The underlying research was serious. Brooks cited studies showing that joining a club that meets once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income, that experiences make people happier than things, and that happiness follows a U-shaped curve through life — high in the twenties, bottoming out at 47 ('this is called having teenage children'), then rising again in retirement. The brilliance of 'Eat more. Commute less.' was its simplicity. In a culture that treats happiness as a complex optimization problem requiring the right career, the right partner, the right investments, and the right self-care routine, Brooks was pointing out that the research suggests something embarrassingly simple: spend more time with people you love. The rest is commentary.