Flourishing.
Isn’t that a great word? I’m reading Owen Flanagan’s “Really Hard Problem” just now and he says the book is about “eudaimonics” – his word for the science of eudaimonia. That’s been translated by many people as “happiness” but apparently “flourishing” is a better translation and I like that word a LOT more than “happiness”. Somehow, happiness has a somewhat more superficial connotation than flourishing. Happiness might be a state, but flourishing captures a dynamic essence. It’s going somewhere, growing, thriving, expanding, improving.
How do things need to be to feel you are flourishing? What supports, encourages, enables flourishing? Which are the flourishing contexts?
I’m still thinking this one through, but the first thing that came to mind was the concept of “flow”. When I feel in the flow, I feel I am flourishing. Flow involves movement, a certain ease and good energy. When I feel frustrated or blocked, or feel in the middle of turbulence, I don’t feel in the flow. The second thing that occurred to me was when I am doing well what I am doing. For example, one day last week, every single consultation I did seemed to go extremely well. I felt I connected so well to every patient, enjoyed meeting them all and felt I could understand them very well. I was doing well what I do – consulting and understanding. Then this last weekend I’ve been teaching and the teaching was easy and fun and the feedback was universally fabulous and I felt I was doing well what I do – teach. A third thing was about energy. When my energy feels good I feel I am flourishing.
Tell me, cos I’m really interested to know – when do you feel you are flourishing? What contributes to that feeling?
Heroes Not Zombies 
I’m with you on the “movement” aspect of the concept of “flourishing.” It IS essentially different from “happiness,” and I think that the flow that you describe is an important part of that.
When I feel as though I’m flourishing, I feel like things are “clicking.” The Universe is putting stuff in my way that I need at that moment (and I’m aware and awake enough to recognize it). I can put my fingers on what I need when I need it. I find sympathy of thought with my children, my husband, my friends and colleagues – I don’t have to do a song and dance to be understood, and I can see through to what they’re telling me without their having to put in too much effort.
The teaching part of your post spoke to me. Often, how I feel about the rest of my life is heavily influenced by how I feel about my work. A good few days in the classroom will create a wave that carries over into the rest of my life – and a rotten day will do the same (if I let it, of course – I ALWAYS have that choice, whether I realize it at the time or not). Since I’m exceedingly blessed in my home life, I find that there’s not a whole lot of negative on that end that can color my professional life in darkened shades, and I bet that has a lot to do with why I’m so generally contented.
I wonder how much of “flourishing,” as with anything else, has to do with being aware of the condition enough to appreciate it…
Thank you for the wonderful post and the question that made clear what is what.
While talking (while having the fellowship) I have no time to grieve for my loneliness and thus I feel myself happy then. It is likewise now when I am leaving this response. The Need to reply frees me from the hardest “to be or not to be” . That’s lovely, but these emotions are unconscious of what’s why and thus while defining the happiness, they do not depict the flourishing in spite of the fact that they are the inseparable part of the last.
The flourishing is the consciousness of the personal participation in the sharing of the light and opening the window to the sunlight.
I think that we may feel ourselves happy while dreaming in the bed, but we need to take some action for to flourish in deed and not to fear our dreams. While I was happy to read your post, my flourish-ness started just at a moment I set down to leave my comments. Thank you for the precious contribution to my sense of being alive.
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[…] that runs through most of the literature on the subject includes some consideration of “eudaimonia” – what is often translated as “happiness”, but which is, I think, more usefully […]