Don’t Just Survive, Flourish

“One forgets: The misery that is not mine today is mine tomorrow. But perhaps—the joy as well?”

- Jean-Luc Beauchard, City of Man

Source: Darius Bashar / Unsplash

“There could be no happiness,” writes Nietzsche, “no cheerfulness, no hope, no pride, no present without forgetfulness.” In order to move forward, to not live forever trapped in the grips of past traumas or even just the daily indignities to which every human being is subjected, we must be able to put what has happened behind us and forget the strife we’ve been forced to bear. Who could drive with the memory of a life threatening accident at the forefront of his mind? Who could find love again while ruminating on a painful divorce?

Forgetfulness is vital. But so too is memory — the refusal to neglect what has been and how it continues to inform what is. When we remember, we restrain our desire for distraction and hold fast to the experiences we deem meaningful, whether the significance of those experiences has had a positive or negative impact on our lives. Doing so helps us to adapt and grow, to learn from our mistakes and project goals into the future. Remembering experiences of loss and pain can help us to be grateful when life is going well and to remain humble in our success. Remembering the times we’ve been hurt teaches us what to avoid and who not to trust. Both the ability to remember and the need to forget, Nietzsche ultimately concludes, contribute to a life well lived.

We open this piece on what it means to flourish and how to do so in the face of hardship with some reflections on memory and forgetting because we’d like to invite you to remember a time in the recent past, one that many of us have found it necessary to distance ourselves from and perhaps even to forget. Walking through crowded stores, eating in bustling restaurants, attending concerts and sporting events, graduations and holiday parties no longer incites the kind of surreal feelings many of us experienced upon returning to “normal” life in the wake of the global pandemic. There was a time, however, when such activities were unthinkable, when no one knew how the virus spread or who was most at risk, when families were prevented from seeing one another, and our churches, mosques, and synagogues were all boarded up. Try, if you’re willing, to remember those early days, the uncertainty, the anxiety, the dread.

Now ask yourself: What did it mean to flourish at a time like that? What did our conception of the good life look like when those activities deemed “nonessential” came to a stop?

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Flourishing, it may seem, is not possible in the midst of intense suffering. Flourishing is often portrayed as being synonymous with happiness and success. How is one supposed to prosper when survival has become society’s dominant value and all our typical markers of a good life have come to an abrupt halt?

Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program lists five central domains for evaluating human flourishing: 1. happiness and life satisfaction, 2. physical and mental health, 3. meaning and purpose, 4. character and virtue, 5. close social relationships. There is no doubt that these are fundamental aspects of a life well lived. In the early months of 2020, however, each of these facets of flourishing was upended. Depression, anxiety, and discontent were rampant. We were discouraged from leaving our homes and told to put our physical and mental well-being on pause. Our lives were adrift, with no clear path forward and no certainty about the future. We were cut off from our communities and our ability to express our various talents and virtues were severely inhibited.

In the midst of such peril, hope easily gives way to despair and the belief that one can live a rich, fulfilling life wanes. What is one to do? For Aristotle, it is at just such moments of moral and existential opacity that one needs exemplars who can model how to live – and perhaps even flourish – through crises. At the best of times, these role models will be found in our families, workplaces, churches, and local communities. At times of social distancing and profound isolation, we must seek them in history, literature, and works of art. There we often meet individuals who underwent trials that resonate with our own — those who bore the slings of fortune with perseverance and grace.

It is no accident that Albert Camus’s 1947 novel The Plague became an international bestseller in the summer of 2020; his protagonist Dr. Rieux exemplifies the courage, wisdom, and love it takes to care for the sick and dying and to do so while keeping one’s humanity intact. Nor should it surprise us that works of fiction can function in this way, that literature and art play an essential role in the cultivation of a good life.

How do we remember the good when trapped in a trying present? How do we forget the present and free ourselves from a reality that threatens to overwhelm us?

Source: Büşra Salkım / Unsplash

In a recent letter on the literary imagination and spiritual formation, Pope Francis reflects on “the value of reading novels and poems as part of one’s path to personal maturity.” Emphasizing literature’s ability to “open up new interior spaces,” Francis insists that reading “helps us to avoid becoming trapped by a few obsessive thoughts that can stand in the way of our personal growth.” It does so by reminding us that life as we experience it today is not the totality of existence, that circumstances change and that those who have cultivated resilient characters can – and often do – live meaningful lives even in the most harrowing of situations.

More than that, it allows us to transcend ourselves, to lose ourselves in a good book and find therein lessons on the art of living from those who have thought deeply about what it means to live well. As C.S. Lewis notes, “In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. . . . Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”

Happiness Essential Reads

The Doomsayer’s Delight and Why It Isn’t All That Delightful

There Are Two Types of Happiness—But Only One Lasts

To become more oneself – is that not the essence of what it means to live a good life? Is it not the very kind of flourishing to which each of us is called, no matter what is going on in the world around us?