What Does It Mean to Flourish? One-Pager

Undergraduate Curriculum

What Is Flourishing?

• Flourishing concerns the goodness of a whole life, rather than pleasure or professional success alone. The classical account connects it with activity in accord with virtue.
• The five domains are happiness and life satisfaction; mental and physical health; meaning and purpose; character and virtue; and close social relationships.

Why Does This Matter?

• Ask what the patient values in each domain when considering care. Examine your own life by the same standard.
• A good life can include hardship and sorrow. Longfellow’s blacksmith joins work, family, community, grief, and rest in a portrait of daily life.

How Do We Flourish?

• Review the five domains and the tradeoffs you are making. Ask whether money, power, honor, or pleasure has displaced more lasting goods.
• Practice virtue during training. Look for support in family, work, education, and community, including religious community, instead of putting every good off until training is over.

Reading Excerpt

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Village Blacksmith

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought!

Discussion Questions

1. Does the village blacksmith seem to be flourishing? Why or why not?
2. The blacksmith's life includes “toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing.” Why does the poem place these together? In the order is there a latent hierarchy? Is flourishing compatible with sorrow?

Sources: LearnWorlds outline; reading and selected discussion questions.