Response to Mary Marcil's question.

Mary asks, "When there is a friendship that just flows smoothly and is enjoyed without struggle, can it ever truly flourish?"

I don't think that friendship in any way requires struggle to flourish, particularly not loose friendships. I have some people that I consider "good friends" and they are just that because there has been no struggle (or very little) between us. My definition of a flourishing friendship with a "good friend" is one in which (as someone said in class today) months can pass in between conversations but when you do reconnect it feels like no time has passed at all. I think these kinds of friendships are particularly special simply because, for whatever reason, we have found someone that we feel undeniably and permanently connected to. This kind of friendship may not flourish extravagantly, but it does indeed leave a lasting impression on the people who are in the friendship. That simple fact in itself is enough, to me, to constitute a flourishing friendship.
When it comes to best friends, though, I think that flourishing is a little different. Anyone that we care that deeply for we are bound to piss off at some point. Perhaps we feel that we owe our best friends our deepest honesty and sometimes they just don't want to hear it. Or maybe we love that person so much that we give them tough love for their own sake. In that sense, I think that struggle is inevitable in that type of friendship, but is it necessary? No. I think it just comes with the territory of caring deeply about a person's well being and not always about hurting their feelings. On that note, best friends also have to know when to lessen the grip on the friendship. It has to be somewhat flexible or it will break under all of the pressure.
In short, I think that some friendships learn a lot and are strengthened through struggle, but other friendships flourish precisely because there is no struggle. It all depends on the type of friendship and the type of person that you are friends with.

Beautiful Messes

In class we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of compartmentalizing. Aristotle was known as the great compartmentalizer of all time. Some look at this quality and see a really smart guy. I do agree that Aristotle was far ahead of his time, but I don't want to automatically label him a genius here. If Aristotle were such a genius, then I think he would have realized all of the things that he was missing when he placed everything into it's own little compartment, never to be heard from again. When it comes to pure science, it is nice to have everything in its proper place. It would be nearly impossible to learn Biology without compartmentalization. When it comes to humanity, however, I think that we have to be very careful how we go about filing information.
Humans are a vast and complicated species. There are too many kinds of people in the world for us all to fit into neat little slots. It is easy to say that humans break down into groups such as gender, national identity, ethnic identity, and even cultural subgroups built into ethnic identity. Even the most sub-sub-sub group of classification, however, is bound to leave somebody out. There are always things about us that are not shared with individuals of our own "group" that may be shared with someone from a different group. So, then, I think that it's important to realize how much we lose when we just throw people into compartments to be sorted. We miss the subtle nuances of one another through classification.
Also, compartmentalizing places or periods of our lives can be dangerous. We're in college. It's time to grow up, cut the cord, learn to stand on our own two feet. But does that have to happen just because we are in college. What does furthering our education have to do with distancing yourself from the relationship that you had with the family? I think it is more a natural inclination to say that when we each, on a personal level, feel the need to leave home and start our own lives then we should do just that. The act of doing so shouldn't be compartmentalized by simply saying that you're in college. Also, just because one leaves the home does not (and should not) have to mean that one leaves behind one's family. There is a way to have one foot in both worlds.


My question is: Can you think of a time when people gain more than we lose through compartmentalization?