Human Flourishing Is Possible in the Midst of Human Challenges
On the first day of my Spiritual Formation class in seminary, our professor asked the class to define the word “spirituality.” Hands shot up all over the room – mine included – and then were lowered almost as quickly as we all realized that we really didn’t know how to define that word. I had the same experience with the word “flourishing,” so I did a little research about it. I learned that flourishing has been a widely discussed topic by scholars as far back as Aristotle. There are a lot of ways to define flourishing that range from the state of flowering in vascular plants to happiness and virtue to righteousness.
The topic of flourishing has been generating a lot of interest in the past few decades as well. Corey Keyes of Emory University defines flourishing as “the pinnacle of good mental health” and then goes on to posit that fewer than 1 in 5 Americans are actually flourishing. Tyler VanderWeele, director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, defines human flourishing as doing or being well in five broad domains: i) happiness and life satisfaction; ii) health, both mental and physical; iii) meaning and purpose; iv) character and virtue; and v) close social relationships. He goes on to say that if flourishing is to be sustained, it would also include stability in financial and other resources to enable maintaining all five domains.
My first thought on reading that was, “Wow. Flourishing seems a lot harder than I thought it was. Am I flourishing? How would I even know?” My second thought was that it seemed like flourishing was strongly related to privilege. I wondered: If I, someone who carries so many privileged identities, feel that “flourishing” is a very high bar, how much higher would it seem to be to people who don’t have the same amount of privilege as I do? What about people who carry generational trauma, who live in poverty, who struggle with addiction or mental or physical illness – is it even possible for people with challenges like these to flourish?
Later that day, I was in my car listening to a podcast, as one does. Lately I’ve been listening to Ear Hustle from Radiotopia, which tells stories about the lives of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Some of the stories have been about people who earned college degrees while in prison; people who have been able to reconnect with children and grandchildren after incarceration; employers who hire, trust, believe in, and equip formerly incarcerated people to go on to bigger and better jobs; and people for whom participation in restorative justice and similar programs has been transformational. It struck me that before I had done any of this research, I would have definitely said that many of the people in those stories were flourishing despite the multitudes of challenges in their lives.
My takeaway from all of this reading and listening and thinking and wondering is that there are multiple ways to flourish. Some of the times when I feel like I am flourishing are when I am working with my amazing colleagues, snuggling with my infant grandson, or working in my beautiful yard. Rather than trying to define it and measure up to it, I’ve decided to try to notice moments of flourishing and to increase awareness of flourishing in myself and others. What does flourishing look and feel like for you? How might you increase awareness of your own and others’ flourishing?
