Time for Family

Philosophy, Wisdom and Ethics

The word philosophy comes from the Greek words philo- meaning "love" and -sophos, meaning "wisdom”. It simply means the love of wisdom. 

According to the Oxford dictionary, wisdom is defined as “the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise.” And according to the Collins dictionary, wisdom is “the ability to use your experience and knowledge in order to make sensible decisions or judgments.” 

My favorite definition of wisdom is “The understanding of what is most important to know.”

The word "ethics" comes from the Greek word ethos, which is related to concepts such as “character" or “values” or “admirable”. What makes a person admirable? It is virtuous character. 

According to the Oxford Dictionary, ethics are moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity. A second definition from Oxford states that ethics is the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles.

My favorite way to look at ethics is very similar to my favorite definition of wisdom. Ethics is about discovering what really matters in life. It is sorting through the following questions:

• What is worth spending time on? 

• How do you know what is not worth the time? 

• How do we know the difference?

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

One cannot be a friend to many people in the sense of having friendship of the perfect type with them, just as one cannot be in love with many people at once (for love is a sort of excess of feeling, and it is the nature of such only to be felt towards one person); and it is not easy for many people at the same time to please the same person very greatly, or perhaps even to be good in his eyes. One must, too, acquire some experience of the other person and become familiar with him, and that is very hard. 

— Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8, Chapter 6

But as regards good friends, should we have as many as possible, or is there a limit to the number of one’s friends, as there is to the size of a city? You cannot make a city of ten men, and if there are a hundred thousand it is a city no longer. But the proper number is presumably not a single number, but anything that falls between certain fixed points. So for friends too there is a fixed number perhaps the largest number with whom one can live together (for that, we found, thought to be very characteristic of friendship); and that one cannot live with many people and divide oneself up among them is plain. Further, they too must be friends of one another, if they are all to spend their days together; and it is a hard business for this condition to be fulfilled with a large number. It is found difficult, too, to rejoice and to grieve in an intimate way with many people, for it may likely happen that one has at once to be happy with one friend and to mourn with another. Presumably, then, it is well not to seek to have as many friends as possible, but as many as are enough for the purpose of living together; for it would seem actually impossible to be a great friend to many people. This is why one cannot love several people; love is ideally a sort of excess of friendship, and that can only be felt towards one person; therefore great friendship too can only be felt towards a few people. This seems to be confirmed in practice; for we do not find many people who are friends in the comradely way of friendship, and the famous friendships of this sort are always between two people. Those who have many friends and mix intimately with them all are thought to be no one’s friend, except in the way proper to fellow-citizens, and such people are also called obsequious. In the way proper to fellow-citizens, indeed, it is possible to be the friend of many and yet not be obsequious but a genuinely good man; but one cannot have with many people the friendship based on virtue and on the character of our friends themselves, and we must be content if we find even a few such.

— Nicomachean Ethics, Book 9, Chapter 10

Aristotle seems to agree with the aforementioned points on understanding what is important in life, what is worth focusing on and spending time on. According to Aristotle “great friendship too can only be felt towards a few people”.

My Family

My therapist, Bridgette, told me the same early on. She noted that relationships take work. And that I only have so much time and energy. She noted that if I did not put in the work that parts of my life would suffer and could be lost.

For close to twenty years, my family ended at my nuclear family for the most part. We would visit a portion of my ex-wife’s extended family, but not mine. I was unfortunately removed from my extended family. I suddenly have an amazing opportunity to renew my relationship with my extended family and to add to my extended family. And my children also share in that amazing opportunity to see and feel what family can be!

I need to spend the time with this family and invest in them. Family is one of the few things that are worthy of focusing on!