What does it mean to flourish?
It’s obvious when a tree is flourishing. Provided the right soil, water, and sun, a flourishing tree grows tall and strong. Its branches spread, its trunk grows thicker, its leaves come in green in the spring, and it produces seeds and sap and deep roots.
You also know when a tree is suffering. You know when its dead or close to dying. You don’t need to ask a tree how it feels. You look at a tree and you know these things. The tree is flourishing or its not.
Flourishing is a fact, not a feeling. We flourish when we grow and thrive. We flourish when we exercise our powers. We flourish when we become what we are capable of becoming.
Of course, people are more complicated than trees, and it can be more difficult to tell when a person is flourishing. But it’s not impossible—in fact, the basic idea is the same. As Edith Hamilton put it, the Greeks often thought of flourishing as “the exercise of vital powers along the lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.”
You exercise your vital powers. Flourishing is rooted in action. That action might be meditation. It might be cooking a meal or teaching a class. It might be putting your daughter to sleep. But flourishing isn’t abstract. It’s a product of what we do.
You exercise vital powers. Vital to you. Vital to the world. You draw from your strengths to do worthy work in the world.
You work along lines of excellence. You don’t just do things. You do them well.
Flourishing, then, isn’t a passing feeling or an emotional state. Flourishing is a condition that is created by the choices we make in the world we live in.
From the book Resilience by Eric Greitens
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