Housecleaning

I have just finished a fast-paced course on the Psychology of Happiness.  There was a lot of writing and even more reading, as well as participation in online class forums.  While I have definitely just done a major sigh of relief, I will miss some of the fruitful conversations (and consequent personal insights) that I've had with my classmates.   Not much of content was new to me but the self-discoveries along the way were invaluable.

There was a twice a year ritual that I experienced while growing up in the Midwest:  housecleaning. We cleaned more than twice a year, but the fall and spring housecleaning was different.  Literally everything in the house was turned over and cleaned.  Windows were washed. Drawers were emptied, sorted to dispose of things that had outlived their usefulness or size, and reordered.  More than just cleaning, the ritual was cleaning out.

For a few years in my adulthood, I continued the ritual, but gradually it went from twice a year to once a year.  First the windows were dropped off.  Then the cleaning out the drawers fell away. Gradually, the ritual just disappeared. Even on my way-too-frequent moves, I seemed not to find the time or priority to clean out.

As my class has been drawing to an end, I've felt myself itching to clean out.  That may at least be in part due to the fact that stacks of reading materials and outlines for essays have overtaken my small desk.  A second computer that is still not been completely replaced by the new one, and related technology items, add to the disarray as does an inappropriate gift I received a few months ago and haven't quite known what to do with.  I've wished I could just push it all into a waste bin and make it go away, but I know things of value lurk in the piles. I think that has just been symbolic of what has been going on inside of me as this class is drawing to a close.

I've been feeling the need to psychologically and spiritual clean out as well.  After 14 years of serious financial struggle since the failure of my business, I am finally to a place where I can let my shoulders drop a bit.  After five years of the most dysfunctional work environment that I've ever witnessed in 25 years of consulting with organizations, three layers of management above me have either been removed or quit in the last months.  While we are now at about half-staff, and a crushing workload faces me daily as far as I can see, I can find potential that new leadership may bring.  Hope is on the horizon.

All that leads me to have discovered in these three weeks that I've been in serious fight-or-flight mode for years.  For so long, that it has become habitual.  While the content of the class has not been anything I didn't know or even anything that I didn't practice for years, it has helped me re-member who I am. I say re-member because it feels like part of myself was put on a shelf and forgotten.  If this class hasn't helped me pull it off the shelf and reintegrate it completely, at the very least I have it in my hands--all of me in my hands.

The cleaning out that I really feel the need for right now is getting rid of all the habits and behaviors that came with the fight-or-flight so that I literally have room to breathe again.  And, the funny thing is that I also think I want to actually clean out, not just metaphorically.

The myth of Psyche demonstrates that the role of women is to sort, pick out what is useful and what has outlived it usefulness.  I think my sorting muscles have atrophied, and physically cleaning my desk, files, closet, and pantry will help me get them in shape for the spiritual sorting I am beginning. While I might like to treat my psyche like my desk and make all the clutter just go away, I know that good stuff is buried in there that I don't want to lose. So, sort I will.