3 Lessons on how to Flourish as a Family

It may seem a simple thought, but where we put our time, and to whom we give it, is a measure of how loving we are able to be with those who matter most to us. Daniel Gundersen learned this lesson through an experience in which he initially would suffer looking at million dollar cabins in the mountains before, via learning from the mistakes of others, he realized that what it takes to get those cabins can be a prison. If you work so much that you don’t make time for your family, Daniel and Natalie taught me, then you have traded the real dream for the image of a dream. While Daniel was soaring through his MBA program at BYU Provo, being decorated with awards for his academic achievements, he also attended a talk in which he was reminded that if you don’t make time for those you love now, you may never get a chance to participate in the mutual love they offer you. As he put it:

What Daniel learned through being attentive to the words of wisdom from someone with more experience was that he had to unlearn his theory of what it meant to flourish. He had to unlearn the notion that the cabin in the mountains was more important then time with his family. And I’ve never seen someone for whom a lesson has contributed more positively to flourishing in their life.

The world renowned scholar Johan Huizinga, in his book on play (Homo Ludens), said “To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.” And he extended this wisdom far beyond poetry, but the basic message is that their is an innate wisdom in the longings of the child. Their powerful commitment to play is something that we can learn from, not something we must discourage. As adults we move through life sometimes forgetting how to play. So, if you are in a position where you have children, remember that the learning is not asymmetrical. Yes, there are practical lessons that parents can teach children, but I learned through talking with the Gundersen’s that there are some profound lessons that children can teach their parents, and that its important for the child’s development that you give them a chance to be the teacher. The way the Gundersen’s do this is through enabling their children to lead highly imaginative, invented games like a game they call “cuz.”

Basically, the Gundersen children love and sometimes miss their cousins so Daniel and Natalie will play the role of being a cousin. They can be a cousin who is a doctor, or an engineer, a pilot or anything else but what matters is that they pretend to be cousins and that it is in fact the children who choose how to play the game– for once, the child invites the adult into their world rather than the other way around. As they put it:

You see, where children must constantly learn about the world from adults, it is important for the adult to learn about flourishing from the child. When you think about, as we often discuss at UEF, when a child is clothed, fed, and sheltered they often naturally just love, learn, and play. Sure, you might say, they don’t have taxes and bills to worry about but that does nothing to undermine the fact that even handling taxes and bills gets easier when we are living a life through the LLP mindset. By letting the children lead the way in play, the Gundersen’s are not only offering the child a respite from a life of being mentored, they themselves (Daniel and Natalie) are being mentored into a better life.

In a conversation anchored in the practical realities of flourishing through a life of love, learn, and play we touched upon an abstract moment when Daniel and Natalie expressed how they came to realize what they valued most deeply. It wasn’t that they thought reflectively and imposed upon the world a new value system, as a philosopher like Jean Paul Sartre might suggest. Instead, they paid attention to their own inner longings, to the things they had set up around themselves as reflective of what they desired to do. Listening to your own self, in other words, may be a more fruitful path to understanding how to flourish then trying to invent a whole new way of being. There is a natural part of you that longs to love, learn, and play. Just look around you and you will see it. In our conversation they expressed this very clearly:

The most important elements of Daniel’s life, from realizing how much he longed to play with his children to pursuing a rewarding professional path, came simply from paying attention. I remember a mentor of mine talking about how to choose your goals. He told me that if you want to know what to do with your life, ask yourself this: “What do you do when you are not forced to be doing anything in particular?” In other words, what comes naturally to you? If you are free to choose whatever you want, what do you inherently choose? I believe this to be one of the most instructive lessons. For Daniel, he chose to explore how to generate electricity and power, and to play more. For me, I realized that when no one was forcing me to do anything in particular I simply gravitated to an abstract form of love, learning, and play insofar as I would engage deep philosophical questions with the LLP mindset. I would play with ideas, learn about them, and absolutely love the process.