A student in my How To Live Well (Intro to Philosophy) class commented on his final reflection that his beliefs did not change throughout the semester. He did examine them for the first time, he said, and he enjoyed that opportunity, especially since he did so alongside of several classic texts. But he was a little surprised that his beliefs did not change.

I replied to him:

“Great! Sometimes we find that we should change our beliefs, but in general I think our beliefs are like plants in our gardens: a few might be weeds; a few might have grown too big, and need to be pruned back; a few might need to be fertillized, watered, and given better growing conditions. And sometimes we find we want to sow some new seeds, or move plants around a bit to achieve a better arrangement.”

This is his first semester of university, and his first encounter with texts like Plato’s Republic and Augustine’s Confessions. My hunch is that those texts have done a little tilling and pruning, and maybe some new seeds have been planted. Or maybe he just got to see how some other people have gardened their beliefs, giving him some new ideas for how he will cultivate his own garden.

Tomorrow we will have our final class discussion, and I’ve already told the students that the topic is this: now that we have spent a semester considering how we might live well, what do others need from us as they seek to live well also?

And behind that question is another hunch of mine, one that is partly grounded in Plato, Augustine, and many others who had ideas and then wrote them down for others to consider: as Robin Wall Kimmerer and Kathleen Dean Moore have both written in several places: All flourishing is mutual.