Having decided that mere wellness is insufficient and that a state of flourishing is to be desired, the next step is to determine what will support me in that endeavour.
Leaving aside food, water and air (which for me comes under flourishing and will be dealt with in another post), the next thing that leaps to my mind is a requirement for safe and secure shelter – something that satisfies the other most basic (physiological) need in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [1]. Preferably, a happy household. To be technical, Maslow includes your sexual drive in this category but I will be dealing with that elsewhere.
For me, shelter has a psychological as well as a physical component – I want it to be a refuge, a tranquil oasis of calm amidst the pressures of life. Something like Superman’s “Fortress of Solitude” [2]. While a shack thrown together on the beach from flotsam and jetsam has its appeal, I want a proper house with a door that shuts out unwanted guests and power supply sales people. And while a proper fortress needs a moat, I will make do with a garden. And no garden is complete without creatures: both wild and domestic.
home
My home must be a happy, cheerful, welcoming and above all calm place. I would prefer it to be small, unique, neat and clean, with just enough furniture to be comfortable but not so much that vacuuming underneath and around it is nightmarish. It will NOT be full of relics from bygone times, in fact, some people might call it sparse or perhaps even spartan (Quelle horreur!). In reality, we don’t need much to survive – that’s why shelter is at the BOTTOM of the hierarchy.
garden
The garden will help with the oasis thing: summer shade and winter storm break. And because it represents flourishing, it must have an element of lushness about it; an abundance of flowers and produce. But it is also a buffer zone/no man’s land separating me from the world at large. We could even think of it as a mystical threshold between out there and in here. I wouldn’t actually want it to be as substantial as a forest of thorns, but substantial enough to draw off malign influences as I cross the boundary.
creatures
As I live in outer suburbia, my property won’t just be a refuge for me. It will also be a safe haven for native birds, lizards, possums and whatever else turns up. I once saw a kangaroo at the top of the hill, and another time an echidna strolling down the hill (I really didn’t think we were that outer). The notion of safe habitat for natives is possibly incompatible with domesticated dogs, but I feel needs to be factored into the plan – the metaphysics of looking after the environment as representative of looking after the self.
Will this household support flourishing inhabitants? Is this enough, or should it encompass other things?
Next time we’ll look at a third value, and in future posts work out how and why the household is so important.
If you think you might have missed an episode, here’s the story so far:
I like your ideas about flourishing (especially the ‘garden as a boundary’ thing)! I keep wondering about other people who might mess it up, though. Wouldn’t everyone in the household have to be on the same page with this idea for it to work? How do you deal with non-flourishing people who may not intend to bring you down but do anyway because of all their own “stuff” ? Your peace and calm could be interrupted because other people’s stuff is bumping around and getting in the way. Enjoy reading your posts! Keep up the good work!
At this point, my garden still exists mostly in my head. I will be talking about this a bit more in a future post, but here’s a quick(ish) answer.
While my garden is my garden, it is part of my household. My household consist of myself, dearly beloved (see relationships post), and creatures. I call it my garden, but it’s really the household’s garden. I know that’s a circular logic (question begging!) but life isn’t really a straight line is it? So being a nurturing place for the household, it will be whatever each member of the household needs at the time they need it.
I find it intuitively appealing to look at it as some Australian native peoples do. They do not own the land, the land owns them – they function to serve the land, and through their care, to preserve balance in the cosmos. Perhaps the place for non-flourishing people is in this realm, where they challenge us and make us question whether what we are doing is really the right thing.