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| Robert Barnes (1840- 1895) Boy Tying a Girl's Shoe |
THE FLYLADY
I am a fan of the Flylady and her housekeeping system because it isn't just a system for cleaning your home. It is also a strategy for life. The Flylady accidentally stumbled upon a secret for living a happy life. This secret is that happiness is kinetic.
The first thing we have to clear up is what we mean by happiness. I am in agreement with Aquinas that happiness can only be found in God in Heaven in what Catholics know as the Beatific Vision. This would be eternal happiness. On the mortal plane, the closest thing we can achieve is what I refer to as temporal happiness. This temporal happiness is not permanent nor is it entirely clear. We deduce this from the variety of things people do in this world to achieve happiness. They do not agree on what constitutes happiness or how to achieve it. Yet, they all want to be happy.
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| Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven, The Empyrean, Gustave Doré (1867) |
The second thing we have to clear up is that pleasure is not happiness. If it was, the drunk and the drug addict would be the happiest people we know. So many people fall into the trap of hedonism thinking that is the way to go. Materialism is an extension of that hedonism as the biggest pitfall to pleasure is running out of money and stuff. You end up having to work to pay for those pleasures, and hedonists do not find pleasure in work.
The third thing we have to clear up is that achievement is not happiness. People love to pursue degrees, trophies, awards, and other vanities to put on their resumes for life. But what about the people who lie on those resumes with fake degrees from diploma mills, jobs they never had, and cheating by various means? We know intuitively that the process matters even when the end result of that process is no recognition at all or if the result is failure.
What is happiness? Happiness is the process of working towards that ultimate end of the Beatific Vision. To put it more succinctly, happiness is work. It is an activity. It is movement towards a worthy end. It is not a static thing like being drunk or stoned but a kinetic thing.
My greatest evidence for this is to look at people who have been overcome by despair. This would be the depressed. This was the Flylady when she was overcome by the grief and sadness of her husband leaving her and found herself in a mental facility. What all depressed people have in common is that they have given up and stopped moving. The Flylady escaped this trap by telling herself to do the one thing she could do. She dressed to shoes. The other stuff would come later, but that simple act of changing from your jammies to being dressed to go out into the world was the way to prime the kinetic pump. From there, she added other things she had been neglecting like her housework. None of this solved her problem with being abandoned by her husband, but it did solve the problem of yielding to the tyranny of her feelings of being abandoned.
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| Scarlett: Where shall I go? What shall I do? Rhett: Frankly, My dear, I don't give a damn. Clark Gable, Gone with the Wind 1961 re-issue trailer. |
Men learn early in life to disregard their feelings and focus on facts and reason. Women do not learn this lesson which is why they are always miserable. They usually need a man to put his foot up their ass and get them moving again. The Flylady figured it out without a man doing that for her. The secret to fortitude is to ignore your feelings and do what needs to be done. This begins with dressing to shoes.
The genius of the Flylady comes with her accidental embrace of the Golden Mean. If despair and inactivity go together, activity and obsession can also go together. Goals should serve as directions for our labors, but they should not serve as masters. It is enough to be doing even if the end result doesn't amount to much. For the Flylady, the timer is what remedies the obsessive-compulsion tendencies that allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Remember, right reason is found in the mean and not extremes. Aquinas and Aristotle would concur. The Flylady system aims for the midpoint between the extremes of obsession and despair.
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| The golden mean. An allegorical depiction of prosperity between prodigality (wastefulness, reckless extravagance in spending money or resources) and miserliness. Wenceslas Hollar (1607–1677) |
The kinetic nature of happiness can be found in the Bible. This is the dictum of Saint James that faith without works is dead. This is Jesus castigating the lazy servant in the parable who buried his talent in the ground. This is our Lord sending out his apostles to labor. God does not need our labor, but we need our labor.
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| FROM THE FRIDGE: The mission statement of the noble peasants |
The saints concur with the kinetic nature of happiness. This is Saint Joseph the Worker who offered up his labor and care for the Holy Family. This is Saint Benedict with his dictum of ora et labora which means to pray and work. This is the Little Flower who didn't let her littleness prevent her from doing small acts of love for the Lord.
If you find yourself at the point of despair, think of the smallest thing you can do and do that thing. I would recommend praying which any conscious person can do even a paralytic in a wheelchair. Don't wait for the feeling to do something to come first. It never does. Feelings come after being dragged along by the doing.
If you find yourself at the point of obsession, take a break. This is the Sabbath rest in the Decalogue and good common sense. It is enough to do your daily tasks. Unfortunately, obsessives usually do not find this rest until everything goes to pieces in their drive to achieve something. They forget the process and focus only on the goal. Pleasure comes when we have earned a rest. Eat a meal. Take a nap. Go on a vacation. Watch a TV show. Listen to a song. These things are enjoyed in direct proportion to our labors.
I have personally been gripped by both despair and obsession at various points in my life. I have learned to keep it between the lines on the highway of life. The Flylady system is an excellent system for doing this. If you follow this program, you will not find happiness. Happiness will find you. Happiness is accidental. It is the byproduct of a life of doing and also moderation.
I pray that you discover this temporal happiness but also the eternal happiness found only in God. Thank you for reading!
