When Help is Help: Aristotle, your Flourishing, and my Flourishing

I have spent a few days looking inside my "shadow."  Now, I want to look at the light side, using Aristotle.

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I rarely use Aristotle.  His xenophobia is unattractive, and his sexism is disgusting.  But his discussion of friendship...

"A friend, then, is one who wishes and does good things to a friend, for the friend’s sake" (Annas, “Self-Love in Aristotle,” Southern Journal of Philosophy)

If you and I are friends, it is because I see your flourishing as my happiness, and you see my flourishing as your happiness.

I want to explain my teaching, my civic life, and my friendships in this light.

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Teaching

I call myself a professor of rhetoric because I need a tribe, but I don't teach "a subject."

• I teach students to identify problems and solutions.  
• I teach students to communicate solutions to others.  
• I ask students to reflect on who-they-become as problem-solvers.

I don't care which problems they pursue, only that they pursue the ones that matter to them.  My advisees work in search engine optimization, in indigenous studies, in public relations, in law, in teaching, in veterinary medicine, as a life doula.  My happiness is my students' pursuit of their own flourishing.

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Civic Life

I write for newspapers and social media.  My writing has been called "invitational," and I treasure that.

Authentic speech is hard; it makes speaker and listener uncomfortable.  But if people are afraid to speak, we will never find ways to work together.  My writing invites people to share their authentic selves.  My happiness is others' flourishing as they speak comfortably in our shared public sphere.

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Friendships

I want my friends to flourish, walking alongside them as they pursue happiness.    

• That might mean working to remove barriers to flourishing (I am great with creative problem solving).  
• That might mean encouraging flourishing (I am a great cheerleader because all of my friends are awesome).  

My happiness is rooted in my friends' pursuit of their own flourishing.

The Aristotelian definition of friendship goes further.  I become a different person, a better person, for a friendship.  Friends don't harden who they are -- they cultivate each other in unexpected ways. 

When I am at my best, I am this kind of friend, son, partner, colleague, seeking the transformation that friendship will bring to us both.
  

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If you've read these posts, shared your own reflections, or suggested a book, you have cultivated me this week.  I have a reading list, including Mark Epstein's The Trauma of Everyday Life.  One person messaged the ways that Your Story Is Your Power: Free Your Feminine Voice, by Elle Luna and Susie Herrick, helped them think about what has been on my plate -- an unexpected gift of friendship.

I can rest now.  :)