Flowing forward

Today I finished reading Flow: The Psychology of Happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. First published in 1990, it is cited in many pop psychology books today. 

Flow was fascinating and gave much insight into human behaviour. It was comforting to discover that ruminating on Everything That Can Go Wrong is what humans normally do when we are not concentrating on anything in particular. Psychic entropy is our default, and the way out and forward is to order our consciousness with absorbing challenges. 

I tried this out the other evening when worry was preventing sleep. Remembering the insights of Flow, I tried to recall the Polish declinations for anyone (ktoś) and anything (coś), which I had reviewed that morning. It worked like a charm. 

One wonderful thing about learning a foreign-to-you language, never mind two, is that it is a lifelong project. Even if you have an unusually quick grasp of languages, such that you develop C2 (near-native) fluency in 3 to 5 years, there will always be another, more complex language to learn. And once you have learned all the rules, you can learn how native speakers authentically break them. If you developed a lifetime goal to outdo Cardinal Mezzofanti, who spoke 30 languages fluently (and often), that would certainly order your consciousness and might give you sufficient meaning in your life to drive the blues away forever. 

Naturally, a meaningful long-term learning goal would not have to involve languages. Partner-dancing is thoroughly absorbing, there are dozens of partner dances to learn, and they are always slightly different, depending on who you were dancing with. Dancing has the advantage over language learning of being very good for your body as well as your brain. The more frequently you danced, the greater the chance you would still be able to do it at 90. Naturally, the more you dance the better a dancer you become. 

Flow says that our challenges should not be so complex as to cause anxiety. This reminds me of Dr. Jordan Peterson's advice to depressed young men to make their beds. Making a bed might be as much of a challenge as they need to cheer up a bit and look for some other challenge, like washing the dishes. Washing the dishes would hopefully get them positive feedback too, something else necessary for happiness. Having washed the dishes, they might go outside for a walk, stopping by the Job Centre to ask for help writing a resume. Telling a boy to get a job when he's too depressed to get out of bed would merely fill him with anxiety, I imagine. 

The idea of working up from small challenges to big challenges reminded me of a plan/wish I had some years ago to have a Grand Ball for all the TLM-going families of the United Kingdom with teenagers. Never having rented a flat, let alone a ballroom, in the UK, I didn't know where to start. And the idea of having to find Edinburgh accommodation for all the TLM-going families of the United Kingdom with teenagers was too daunting. Besides, what for Canadians is a quick trip of 100 km is a wild adventure of 60 miles to a British person. Obviously this was much too big a challenge. The teenage girls with whom I had shared this dream were somewhat disappointed. 

However, all was not lost. As you know, I decided to have a waltzing party in the parish hall last February, and it was successful enough to have another one after Easter. Then there was another and another, and I hit on the more complex idea of having a bigger dance in a bigger hall with live musicians and TLM-going families of All Scotland with teenagers. Including the musicians, there were 60 people, some who travelled from other Scottish cities. 

The entertainment of 60 people was well worth the work, but the hall increased its prices, so the next challenge is to increase the number of people who buy tickets. (Sadly, I realized that I had to raise the prices of teenagers' tickets, but I kept the adult tickets the same.) My goal is to attract between 70 - 100 people, some of whom might conceivable travel up from the North of England or, if they would like to visit Edinburgh friends over the weekend, London. To meet this challenge I have so far bought an advertisement in the next issue of Mass of Ages magazine.  

The self-appointed task of creating rational (and, incidentally, flow-creating) entertainments for TLM-going Catholics (while restoring Western Civilization along the way) throws up many, many challenges. One is actually teaching a dance myself. Talk about leaving one's comfort zone! Another is organizing a group trip to Vienna to waltz at a proper Catholic Viennese ball---a challenge so big as to be slightly insane.

Nevertheless, I spent part of last Saturday afternoon organizing my consciousness by working out the problems involved in taking young folk to Vienna and unleashing them upon the Viennese. I mentally picked the 6 candidates most likely to go, pondered how we could raise money, and found a dancing school in Vienna that could polish up their skills in an afternoon. I even sent an email to the St. Boniface Institute to ask if they were planning a ball for 2025.  

But then I found out that there is a charity Viennese Ball tonight in Denver to raise funds for the International Theological Institute, and I got cold feet. At first I was charmed that these plucky Americans were recreating in Colorado what I hoped to see in Austria. But then I saw the word Quadrille. It had not occurred to me that the Viennese dance anything but the waltz at their dances. I checked YouTube and, lo, quadrilles. How on earth would I teach my merry band of 6 quadrilles? And which quadrilles? 

"But we don't need quadrilles," boomed an ancestral voice in my head. "We have many square dances of Our Own. And we don't need Viennese Balls. An Edinburgher Ball would be good enough." 

Normally I get cross when people (even voices in my head) discourage me from doing things. But in this case, I think the ancestral voice was quite right. I shall wait until there is once again an actual Trad Catholic Ball in Vienna before I worry about taking people to one, and in the meantime I will work towards a proper Trad Catholic Ball of our own. It may take ten years, but I think it would be well worth working towards.