Pausing in Developmental Friendship: Enjoy the Practice
Cultivating developmental friendship supports our growth in complexity. It helps bring consciousness to our relational space in which we can better integrate our naturally different ways of being. After all, we are a social species with different talents and contributions to make to one another, imagine what we can accomplish together!
AR+ places developmental friendship at the heart of the work of cultivating ARTistry. Developmental friendships are experienced as present when[i]:
1) engaging in some kind of shared work;
2) feeling high relational regard toward one another;
3) wishing to become more known to one another;
4) making a commitment to self-development through reflexivity;
5) experiencing a quest that increases – and requires – mutuality on the way to a more sustainable world;
6) recognizing the significant role of a “third” presence – namely a mutual friend and/or community of co-practitioners.
Developmental friendship is not (necessarily) the kind where you go to the movies together. It draws on thinking from different eras on the preciousness of adult friendship for transformation of self and community. For example, Aristotle’s three types of friendship, outlined in his Nicomachean Ethics, continues to offer a helpful typology: friends of utility, from whom, for example, we may borrow money; friends for pleasure, with whom we might go to dinner and a movie; and friends of virtue, who make us better people. The latter, he saw, as rare and best because with them we develop character.
What happens when we become more conscious of friendship? The elements of developmental friendship noted above appeared in Bradbury and Torbert, (2016), a book that described a relational action inquiry into the dynamics of power and love. Now developed as central to ART, this type of inquiry transform through life as it transforms how we live our life. Key is to care for connection and not remain oblivious of, or stuck in, conflict. With care we can use conflict constructively to grow ourselves and one another while accomplishing work together. The motivating power source is not that we like each other necessarily, but that we realize we are connected and can learn with one another. This may be especially important in the midst of challenging inquiries inherent in relationships of diversity. At the extreme spectrum self preoccupied rage can become a constructive ardor. Bradbury and Torbert, 2016 also contains descriptions of practices along this spectrum in which developmental friendship can be exercised: at the grocery store, over an evening with friends, a few days of retreat together, a lifetime. You get the idea.
What’s the practice?
At AR+ we have various gatherings and coLABs in which, increasingly, we are attending to how we interact (and can improve!) our dynamics around power, inquiry and collaboration. That’s good, BUT…”is this practice of developmental friendship too much like eating spinach?! You know, it’s good for you to work with conflict, but…maybe not so tasty!” – said one of my developmental friends. I pondered this as chewed my spinach. So thank goodness for people with better ideas…such as Yvonne, who wondered out loud one day:
“What about a flower power meet up,” asked Yvonne of Ilaria & Hilary. We had met as a trio in a coLAB on co-creativity. “Yea! What a great idea!” “Let’s get to know one another better!” Do we meet in Yvonne’s home in Florida? In San Diego with Ilaria? Or rainy Portland with Hilary. Turned out that Portland offered easiest logistics, tho’ not best weather. Our theme? We already shared a love of flowers as we had related to them as teachers during our coLAB. Quickly we aligned around a theme of Transitioning & Blooming. The theme connected Ilaria’s new baby, Yvonne’s dissertation and Hilary’s rematriating to Ireland, all now on the way. We’d meet over Earth Day (April 22). Of course. We’d spend three days, as a sacred pause, together.
We share a brief photo PDF essay in which Yvonne Buysman, Ilaria DiStefano and Hilary Bradbury describe our mini-retreat in developmental friendship. Writing briefly helped us make sense of our time together. We hope it’s a taster that works as an invitation and/or inspiration to doing something like this. And if you feel you really don’t have the time, this may be exactly when you need a retreat. Please enjoy and share your practice of developmental friendship!
