How does your garden grow?

I promised a post on friendship, using Aristotle's philosophy as my guide.  Friendship for me has been a process of learning my own boundaries.  I am a house, with many rooms, and a large yard.  The house is reserved for those that i allow into the deepest parts of my heart.  To them I am transparent, they can come and go because I trust them to honor me.  My yard started out unfenced, allowing anyone in.  Unfortunately my garden got trampled by visitors that didn't know how to respect me, and the flowers in my heart were broken and withered so that I didn't have anything beautiful to give to those that DID respect me.  I had nothing to bring inside.  (This blog totally explains the internal struggle I face, In learning about my personality preferences I began to learn why I did the things I did.) So I began to wonder, what IS friendship?  How can I be kind to others if I don't let them in?  How can I give something beautiful to someone that needs it, and yet keep them out of my garden?  In my quest I found many things but the most helpful was this, Aristotle's view on friendship.  He basically states that there are 3 types of friendships, friendships of: Pleasure, Utility, and Virtue.

Friendships of Pleasure: Friends with whom you partake in vices, and/or fun activities.  These friendships are shallow, though may seem deeper than they are because you have "fun times" together.

Friendships of Utility: Friends you use to benefit, and also they benefit from you.  These friendships are based on need, and are obviously shallow.  Once one of you ceases benefiting from the other the friendship is over.

Friendships of Virtue: These are deep lasting friendships.  These are friends whom share your moral compass, your vision of the world, and your values.  These are friends that support you and what you stand for.

Just looking at friendship in these categories opened my eyes.  I realized that I wanted to keep friends, other than friends of virtue to a minimum while I constructed my personal definition of "Virtue".  Friends of Virtue would respect my garden.  So I decided to put a fence around my garden... not a privacy fence, a picket fence.  I would share my flowers with friends of Utility and friends of Pleasure, I would reach over the fence to them... but only those that respected the garden would be invited in.  I had to look back at how these categories shifted from college onward to understand how and where to build this fence, how to use the fence etc.

symbols don't represent a literal number of friends, but rather the idea of the percentage of time I spent with each category of friends.

18-22 (At ISU)
Pleasure friends (for going to parties mostly)**********************************************
Friends of Utility (study/running partners)     ***********************************
Friends of Virtue                                         *********

22-28 (Had 2 kids started working)
Friends of Pleasure (partys/BBQs/running Partners) ##########################
Friends of Utility (babysitting/running partners)        ##################
Friends of Virtue (other parents)                              ######

28-32 (transition from Civilian to Army)
Friends of Pleasure (Army peeps/BBQs/Running Partners)#########################
Friends of Utility (babysitting/Running Partners)                 ######################
Friends of Virtue (like minded parents)                               #######

33-34 (after my search)
Friends of Pleasure (Running partners/BBQs)                           ***********
Friends of Utility (babysitting/house/car help)                            ***
Friends of Virtue (as defined, even if it's only family)                 ******************************

You see, it now seems like a waste of energy and resources to socialize with those that aren't friends of virtue.  I could put those resources to better use helping others, and working to LIVE my values.  I believe that as I find more friends of Virtue, I will find that my friends of Utility and Pleasure will also be my friends of Virtue, and my "lines" will be close to even.  At that time I will have a garden full of flowers to pass out to those that are in great need of something beautiful.  Until then I've put up a wall that has, "UNDER-CONSTRUCTION OPENING SOON" spray painted on it while I replenish and reconstruct my garden.