Striking a work-life balance in modern society is challenging. For many people the period of transition from one to the other is a period of high stress. What’s at stake goes well beyond scheduling work hours so that we can spend enough time at work or shopping, in scholarship or an engrossing hobby, and at home. The challenge we face when turning our attention back to family reaches into our minds hearts inviting us to learn how to move fluidly in an out of two, or perhaps more, very different worlds.

Beyond any surface differences, worlds of human endeavor are forms of conscious living shaped by different expectations regarding meaning, truth and goodness. Some people become very creative in the rituals and hacks they use to help them make mental, emotional and physiological shifts, especially when these diverse worlds exists in the same place either a home office or home studio. But adjusting requires not just adopting new behaviors and patterns of cooperation but engaging distinct modes of thinking, feeling, caring and responsible living. Something that helps the deeper transition is to understand that the worlds of work, commerce and home, as well as the worlds of scholarship and art, are defined in large part by what they exist for or what is of ultimate importance within those worlds.

Communities are structured around goals and differ from each other and in terms of what the members care about most. At the most superficial level, the community of retailers and customers exists for the sake of economic exchange. Whether the interaction and relationship goes any deeper than the handing over of money and gathering-up of purchases may depend in large part on what part of the country the store is located in. How I am expected to act, to think and to feel as a customer is determined by the patterns that make up the world of retail exchange. What members of this transient community of sellers and buyers most care about, what counts and true and good, is utility or being useful to others so that they in turn will be useful to me. This may sound cold and heartless, but as the saying goes, it’s just business. And, without it we would all be at a great loss.

At a deeper level, the social world of friends and acquaintances involves a degree of utility, friends do wish to be helpful to each other, but it differs from the world of economic exchange by the interest and enjoyment each person takes in and from a common activity and the presence of other people. Attending a book club is quite different from visiting a bookstore. In parts of the country where a trip to the grocery store may involve catching up with the retail clerk, economic activity is subsumed within the social world. Stopping in at a bookstore may well turn into a book club meeting. In other contexts, interactions with employees of large corporations or conversations with telemarketers reading from scripts feel phony. Here social interactions feel like a veneer in the service of the economic objectives rather than a genuine interest in and enjoyment of each other and the activity itself. How we operate socially with friends is very different from how we operate simply as customers and business partners. The worlds differ, the expectations differ, the patterns of thought and feelings differ, and the values differ. Consequently, we are different. What counts as true and good in my social world is doing things I enjoy with people that I like.

The highest form of community is one that involves some measure of usefulness, a high degree of enjoyment in each other, and an deep commitment to the well-being of the other. There is something self-referential in the orientation of people to each other in the worlds of economic exchange and social engagement. In the first, all hope to gain something useful. In the second, all hope to gain some enjoyment or pleasure. The highest form of human friendship is oriented to the what is true and good in the other person. In this world, what matters most is virtue. Starting and maintaining this kind of friendship requires the greatest change in me. To be a good friend, I must cultivate a capacity to think and care about my best friend or loved one first. A great friendship is one in which both friends prioritize the utility and enjoyment of the other and desire to see the other grow in virtue and goodness.

The degree to which couples and members of a family cultivate this highest form of friendship determines the goodness and happiness of the family circle. The degree to which individuals develop the skills needed to shift back and forth among these three worlds determines the emotional safety and happiness of the members. All three worlds are needed for a fully functioning society and the mark of full adulthood is the ability to adopt the right frame of mind and heart at the right time.