Chop Wood. Carry Water.

Here's the main thing that The Program has encouraged me to do: live my life, or attempt to live my life, on a spiritual basis.  And I say this believing that our beloved Program is no better or no worse than any other spiritual program in providing its adherents with a good foundation for life.   The drill is pretty much the same: Find god -- Serve others.  I think it's possible to condense spirituality into that essence.  The methods may vary somewhat but the goal is the same.  Our Program is geared toward the drunk and the drug addict, but spirituality is spirituality.


"What do you do to reach enlightenment?"
"Chop wood, carry water," said the master.
"And after you reach enlightenment?  What then?"
"Chop wood, carry water," said the master.


When I talk about the benefits that have accrued from trying to live a spiritual life I realize what a vocabulary we have, what a mindset, what a common goal.  I may be at a different point in my pursuit than you are, but we're traveling the same road.  I can give advice on where I've been and how I've gotten to where I am, and I can visualize how it might be once I get further on down the road, but the goal is the same.  Our experiences vary but we all use the same tools from the same toolkit.   It's like being in the same Spanish class -- some of us are more fluent but we're all trying to speak Spanish.


I confess to being amazed that folks without this kind of foundation can make it through life without totally losing their grip on sanity.   Life can be hard.  It can be confusing and contradictory and just #$@!! frustrating.  I want to control everything and predict the outcome.  I want to be in charge of everything.  I want to get my way.


What a blessing The Program can be.  I wish I could have received this blessing without being brutalized to within an inch of my life.  Who knows -- maybe that makes it sweeter.

Wise and Calm, or Calm and Wise, I'm Not Sure Which

Calm:  Undisturbed; unruffled; tranquil; still.
Wise:   Having or showing good judgment; sagacious; prudent; discreet.


The other day someone described my behavior as "wise and calm."  This was someone who obviously has no idea what the hell's going on.  This has been happening more frequently as I get older.  It did not happen when I was drinking, I can assure you of that.  Phrases like "nightmare" and "train wreck" and "asshole"  come to mind.  I recall "big asshole" being bandied about on more than one instance.


Wise I can see, maybe, on a good day.  When someone says "wise" I assume that they really mean "old."  I think it's hard not to get a bit wiser as you age.  Maybe wise means "not stupid."  If you quit sticking your hand into a running fan after losing several fingers in earlier hand-running fan encounters it hardly seems appropriate to call this wisdom.  My cat could figure that one out.  She's a pretty smart cat but she's still a cat.


Calm is more problematic.  I wouldn't call myself calm.  Calmer, sure, but not calm.  Maybe when I appear calm folks are actually seeing me when I'm tired.  Calm and exhausted look the same sometimes.  I'm better at appearing calm.  I found that when I wasn't calm and not trying to appear calm that I alarmed people.  I try not to do that anymore, with varying degrees of success.


Calm is a parked car.  Appearing calm is a parked car, with the engine turned on, and a foot on the accelerator, pushing it to the floor.  The car isn't moving but it shaking and making a hell of a lot of noise.  That's how I feel.  What you see on the outside is not what is going on underneath.  It's the old duck analogy -- smoothly floating on top of the water, little webbed feet churning away just under the surface.


Strangely enough, it works some of the time.  If I pretend that I'm calm, then I feel calm.


Calmer, not calm.


-er:  Added to many adjectives and adverbs to form the comparative degree, as later, greater.

The Small, Still Voice

Herr Luber and I have been discussing some ongoing uncertainties in our lives and pondering how meditation and prayer can be part of the solution.  The Program has definitely put me in the Solution Business.  I know, I know, you're thinking: "Horseface?  In the solution business?!"  I will admit to having a long and storied love affair with the Problem Business.  I do love wallowing around in The Problem.  It's so warm and comforting and familiar there.  I'm proficient at problems; it's the solutions that elude me.


Meditation seems as if it's going to be such a waste of time before I get started with it.  I'm a guy and meditation isn't our thing, generally thinking.   I fix things following time-honored techniques, using my massive will and impressive intellect.  Sitting quietly and listening to my Inner Voice doesn't seem as productive as taking a jackhammer to something.  And then, to complicate matters, I don't feel like I've accomplished anything when I'm done meditating.  With the jackhammer, I can gaze approvingly at the remains of the wall.  I get up when I'm done meditating and I'm all: "OK, well, whatever."  It doesn't feel like anything has changed.  I put down the jackhammer and I'm like: "Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about."


The thing about my recovery is that I don't do anything until I see that it's going to be intensely practical.  I just won't make the effort unless I see some results; concrete results in my daily life.  It's the same thing with The Program: although I still don't really understand how it works I run into a lot of relatively happy people.  I'm curious, then, as to what they did to get relatively happy.  I'm not doing anything they suggest if they stay pissed and depressed.  It's the happy that I like.


The meditation helps me be quiet so I can hear some direction.  The direction isn't delivered with the subtlety of a football coach yelling at me through an amplified bullhorn.  Instead, I sense a slight shift in the direction of the breeze.  I get a sense that I should stop moving forward or maybe pick up my feet and get moving.  It becomes intuitive.


What's the opposite?  Jackhammer-itive?

Terminally Unique

Different:  Not alike; dissimilar; unlike most others; unusual.


When I was drinking my life was dominated by the feeling that I didn't fit in.  I didn't fit in anywhere.    It was profoundly uncomfortable to feel that way.  It was as if I was standing on the outside of a closed circle, peering over the heads of everyone else, trying to see what was going on in the center.  I felt excluded, different than anyone else.


Part of these feelings I can attribute to my disease of alcoholism; part I can attribute to normal teenage angst that I never bothered to outgrow.  It was very convenient to imagine that I was one of The Others.  I thought that no one else understood me.  I was terminally unique, and I decided that I was going to stand in the dark and resent the hell out of everyone who didn't  love me.  I was going to will them to see what an amazing, special specimen that I was.  Or I was going to die and let them suffer horribly at my funeral, full of regret that they didn't treat me better when I was around.


Brother.  No wonder I irritated everyone.  I was irritating.


One of the greatest blessings of my recovery is that I have finally grown into my own skin.  I know who I am, more or less, and I'm comfortable with that.  I still people-please too much but it's not my sole vocation anymore.  I don't try to pretend that I'm not who I am or that I like what I don't like.  It's OK.  


People ask SuperK what I'm like at home.  "Like this," she says.  "This is what he's like at home."  I feel good about that, even though she's probably lying.  I'm consistent.  I feel a little different still but I like that.


Does any one know what I'm talking about?

I've Got Nothing New

Some oldies but goodies . . . .


I don't know what's best for me most of the time.  The things that I'm sure I HAVE to have frequently blow up in my face when I get them.  This is why I don't ask for specific things any more, unless I really, really HAVE TO HAVE them.  Then I go for it when I pray, unspooling hours and hours of instructions.  If I'm really motivated god does exactly what I want god to do.  And the flip side of the coin is that when the events transpire that I believe are a TOTAL DISASTER they often turn out to be wonderful blessings in disguise.


I cringe a little when I hear phrases like "Pain is the touchstone to all spiritual growth."  There's a little too much pop psychology there for my comfort and I'm not sure what a touchstone is, exactly, but I can work around my reservations because it's so frequently true.  I grow when I'm challenged.  I don't do the hard work unless I'm uncomfortable.


Touchstone:  Any test or criterion for determining genuineness or value; a type of black stone formerly used to test the purity of gold or silver by the streak left on it when it was rubbed with the metal.


I had a long talk with Herr Luber yesterday about the stress of Change and The Unknown.  Stress can be very stressful.  But enduring the stress, developing the patience and quiet and presence to shoulder on through almost always leaves me in a better place.  Now, I'm not suggesting that stress is my favorite thing in the world, but I don't run from it like it's the plague any more, either.  I come out in a better place, tougher and meaner and more resilient.  


My getting fired is an apt example.  When people express their sympathy or outrage I'm all: "Eh.  I've been fired before.  I'm a drunk.  I know how to get fired and live to fight another day."  I got the best job I ever had after getting fired.  The dross was burned off and I was in a better place.


I flash back to my first trip to a jungle in Ecuador.  It involved a plane landing at a god-forsaken air strip hacked out of the brush; a 3 hour, bone-rattling ride in an open-air jeep over what passed for a semblance of a road, interrupted once by a long interrogation with teen-aged soldiers carrying Uzis; and concluding with a 2 hour motorized canoe trip up a winding tributary of the Amazon, vines and other serrated vegetation lashing my face the whole time.  


Ending up being one of my best vacation experiences.  Not easy -- memorable

Planes, Pools, and Coffee Machines

Actions:  Behavior; habitual conduct.  (You want to hear a synonym for actions?  Battle.  How cool is that?).


The Program teaches me that I need to pay attention to my actions.  It's amazing I need to be told that how I behave is important.  I thought that what was important was how I intended to behave.  Actions are for the unsophisticated.  Thinking is where it's at.  I read and re-read the part of The Book that suggests the world judges us on our actions, not our intentions.


"Really?" I said, genuinely surprised.  "Really?!"


When I got on an airplane a couple of hours after being discharged I found myself in front of some guy who didn't have an inside voice.  He wasn't in the row behind me, either; he was a few rows back.  I'm not even sure he was on the same plane.  He may have been inside the terminal at an airport in the next state.  Why is that the people who don't have an inside voice are never very interesting?


"Higher Power," I prayed.  "Please crash this plane so I don't have to listen to that guy any more."


I believe I've mentioned that prayer is not my strong suit.  I don't know what my strong suit is anymore.  I don't think I even have a suit.  I think I gave all of my suits to Goodwill.


Anyway, the following day I went with SuperK over to our exercise club to swim.  We popped into the hot tub for a minute to warm up before getting into the pool, which was crowded that morning.  Things are always crowded when I'm not in a good mood.  God thinks this is funny, to teach me patience by putting me in long lines.  I would prefer being struck patient.  That would be easier on me.


A woman came into the pool area and put a bottle of water on the floor in front of one of the swimming lanes, then joined us in the hot tub.  After a minute I got out and went over to the lane that she apparently wanted to reserve, even though you can't do that.  This isn't Hertz -- this is the pool.  We don't take reservations for pool lanes.  You can't say a pool lane for later.  You can get in the pool or you can stay out of the pool -- those are the two choices.  I pointed down at her bottle as if to say: "Do you want me to throw this in the garbage can or should I bounce it off your forehead?"


"I was getting ready to swim," she said.
"Like right now?" I asked, standing in front of the pool lane she wasn't standing in front of, being in the hot tub and all.
"In like 30 seconds," she replied.


I was trying to keep my temper chained up in the fiery pit that it calls home, but it was straining to get out.


"Were you waiting?" she said, stupidly.
I sighed.  "It's not that important."  I thought she would see that she was IN THE WRONG and let me swim first, which she DID NOT DO.  I sat along the full pool for 5 minutes until another lane opened up, stewing and boiling and judging.


Five minutes.  Can you believe that?  Five minutes.  I should have drowned her.


Today I went into Starbucks for a cup of coffee.  After the very nice young woman rang up my overpriced drink I remembered that I need a pound of coffee for home.  If you buy a pound of coffee then you get a free overpriced drink.


"Go ahead and pick out the coffee you want and then I'll ring it up," she said.  
"Why don't you go over there and pick it out yourself?" I wanted to say.  "I just told you what I wanted.  I'm the fucking customer and you're the fucking employee.  Don't make me paw through your stuff looking for something I want to buy."


Vaguely, I sensed that I was overreacting, so I went over and got the coffee myself.  When I returned to the counter I asked her to credit me for the overpriced drink that I had already paid for so that I could get a free overpriced drink with my pound of coffee, but someone else had gotten in line in front of me, so I had to wait.  It has been a bad week for me as far as queuing up is concerned.  I'm glad I didn't end up in the emergency room.


"Oh," she said, which worried me.  "That promotion only applies to this type of overpriced drink, not the kind of overpriced drink that you already paid for."  I have buying coffee beans from this chain for 15 years, always getting the kind of overpriced drink that I had already purchased, only for free.


This type of dialogue went on for a bit longer and none of it was to my credit.  I did not, however, buy the fucking coffee beans without getting a free overpriced coffee drink.


"So you don't want the beans? "she asked.


I thought of my sponsor saying: "Try not to talk, Horseface.  Just try not to talk.  It's only going to make things worse."


See how it is with actions?  I pay attention to them today.  While getting discharged and traveling and seeing my family didn't upset me too much, obviously it upset me more than I was willing to admit.  I could tell because my actions were exaggerated and inappropriate.  

And I Deserved It!!

Deserved:  Well earned; merited.


The thing is that I deserved to get fired.  I was no longer very productive at my job and I hadn't been in quite a while.  I didn't enjoy what I was doing or the people I worked with or the philosophy of the company or even their motto, which was: "Why?  Because We Don't Like You."  Any two of those factors put together would be a good reason to move on, or to be moved on by force.  


When I started working on inventories and tried to take a semi-honest look at the reasons behind my dismissal from various jobs, both drunk and in sobriety, I kept coming across a central theme.  Me.  The central theme in all of the various, wide-ranging scenarios, was me, Horseface Steve.  I spent so much time trying to blame other people for my difficulties or discomfort that I never got around to the Horseface Steve part which is, of course, the most important part.  I found that I almost always deserved to lose the jobs that I lost.  Moreover, I found that people I worked for were generally good and decent, and that usually I should have been moved on way, way before it actually happened.


Still, it's not the best feeling in the world to get fired.  (I do like that the phrase "to be fired" is a colloquial take on the original term "to discharge."  Apparently, people used to get "discharged" from jobs and we dumbed it down to a weaponry analogy).  The actual firing was kind of like knowing that someone small was going to punch me in the gut very gently, and here it comes!  It wasn't the stunning blind-side sucker punch that used to stun me when I was drunk and stupid, but that didn't make it pleasant.


Next adventure, please.

Fired!

Fire:  (Pun on discharge), (Colloq.), to dismiss from a position; discharge.


I got fired today.


That statement should stand on its own merits but there you go.


"I'm on a plane trying to get home for the weekend so I'll get to the point.  We've decided to go another direction with our representation in your corner of the world.  Don't take this personally -- we appreciate your efforts over the years -- but we've decided to make a change," said the faceless bureaucrat who apparently is tasked with making these decisions.  I really don't know -- I've never met him.  I think he's my boss's boss's boss.  What would that make him?  My great-grand boss?


"How am I supposed to take it?" I asked.  "Impersonally?  Mechanically?  Spiritually?  By transferring it to another person?"  I didn't really see how I was supposed to take it if not personally.  It was an extremely personal thing.  I could tell that this guy did stuff like this all the time.  I don't think he had trouble falling asleep that night, either.  He did it on the phone and it didn't take 45 seconds.  He was controlled and unemotional and careful to keep everything very legal.  


This was always a classy, classy organization.  45 seconds on the phone with a guy I've never met on a Friday afternoon after 15 years of labor.  I've worked for this organization, in one form or another, since 1997.  I'm not that good with dates but I believe we are closing in on 2012.  I would have hoped for 75 seconds at least.  Not more than that, of course.  That would be piggish and self-centered.


"I'm wondering why you didn't let me know that you were unhappy with my work.  If you had discussed this with me maybe I could have made some changes," I suggested.  He didn't say anything.  This was OK because I knew exactly why they weren't happy with my efforts, which were intermittent and pathetic and quite half-hearted.  But I figured if I was going to get fired I was going to make the guy squirm a little, the piece of shit.


"Hey, here's something funny," I said.  "I moved 2500 miles away last year and you guys never figured it out.   You're really on the ball.  You're really right on top of things.  That's a hell of an organization you work for."


If you would have told me at the start of the year that I would have lasted this long I would have laughed in your face.  And SuperK told me more than once that this was my last trip back to The Old City to work.  Regrettably, that didn't stop her from freaking out a little bit, apparently fouling up a pretty good nap.


Be careful what you pray for because you might get it.


Here's the thing: What I was doing wasn't right.  It wasn't awful but it wasn't right.  I had decided that because I wasn't treated very well by this organization in some crucial past dealings that I had earned the right to behave poorly in return.  Here's a quote: "To escape looking at the wrongs we have done another, we resentfully focus on the wrong he has done us.


And I didn't say any of those things.  I made everything up except for what he said to me.


I tell my buddies all the time: "Do me a favor -- try not to talk to today.  Try not to say anything.  Your day will go much better."  


Yeah, tell me about it.

Reviewing Reviewing Rehearsing Rehearsing

When I'm feeling especially clever I spend my time in The Past and in The Future.  In The World According to Horseface he Present is a very borrrrrring! place indeed.   Anybody can hang out in The Present.  There's nothing cool going on there.  It's full of work and bathing and listening to tedious people drone on and on, often about how uninteresting The Present is.


Review:  To view again; look at, look over, or study again; to look back on; view in retrospect.


The Past is a powerful source of painful memories.  I can inspect burned bridges, ruined relationships, and crashed careers.  I can analyze my behavior.  I can come up with something better than what I came up with it at the time, or I can worry that what I came up with was taken the wrong way.  Plenty of things to obsess over in The Past.


I can spend time looking in The Past reviewing, reviewing, reviewing . . .


Rehearse:  To perform for practice, as a play, etc.  in preparation for a formal or public performance.   (Director, anyone?)


I can also choose to mine The Future for problems waiting to happen.  Because The Future, by definition, has not yet happened, it is a rich mother lode of disaster.  How many hours of conversations have I had with people who weren't present, preparing for something that never happened?  More than one, less that a million, closer to one than to the other, can you guess which one?


I can spend time in The Future rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing . . .

Grasping

Grasping:   Greedy; eager for gain; avaricious.
Grasp:         To take hold of firmly . . . ; to take hold of eagerly or greedily; seize.


The Minor Buddhist talks a lot about the problems that bubble up when I spend too much time in grasping mode.  I think that about all of the pain that there is in my life comes about when I try to grab and hold onto things too strongly.  Grasping is a brutal concept; it implies greed and gain and power.


My impression is that I should strive to wear the world like a loose garment.  I'm in the world; I'm part of the world; but I shouldn't try to wrestle life down to the ground and pain it.  Meditation helps me here -- it allows me to watch the world flow by without judgment.  


My claw marks are on everything.

Great Displeasure

Anger:  Implies emotional agitation of no specified intensity aroused by great displeasure.


"I think I'm a little angry about this trip back to The Old City," I said to SuperK.  "What with the family and the work and the lousy weather returning and all that."
"You're not a little anything," she pointed out, pointedly.


The Book warns us many times that anger is an emotion that has a lot of grim consequences for the drunk in recovery.  There are famous phrases like "a dubious luxury of more normal men" and "the grouch and the brainstorm are not for us."  I'm not sure what a grouch is or why brainstorming leads to being pissed off but I'm not sure about very many things.  There you have it.


I don't think I hew the company line too closely when it comes to anger.  I don't interpret these phrases to mean that we shouldn't get angry, ever.  I don't think Bob and Bill were suggesting that we're going to be able to avoid anger once we get sober and then forevermore.


My opinion is that these guys are counseling caution when it comes to quick and powerful angry responses to irritating situations and people.  Counting to 10 works for many people; counting to 2,873 is very reasonable for the alcoholic.  I know my technique was to jump to a conclusion, get very, very angry very, very quickly, then launch a furious counter-strike.  After all, the best defense is a big offense.  I can't be reminded often enough that "restraint of tongue and pen" is going to pay handsome dividends for me.  I say stupid things when I'm calm and thoughtful.  When I'm angry and impulsive I'm just an idiot.


I also think that the recommendation is to make sure that anger -- a normal, unavoidable human emotion -- needs to be carefully managed.  So when I get angry I count to 2,873, biting my tongue hard enough to draw blood, then I try to deconstruct the anger.  Keeping my mouth shut helps me to minimize collateral damage so that I can take a look at why I got angry.  Usually, it's because I'm not behaving very well and I'm annoyed that I got called on my bullshit.  The important thing is that I deal with the anger so that it doesn't develop into the deadly Resentment.  That's what I need to avoid.


Resentment: taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

There Comes a Season: Turn Turn Turn

The weather is starting to turn turn turn toward the winter ahead.  This is always a tough time for me.  I'm an outside person.  I'm a big lizard, looking to bake in the sun.   I tend to experience some melancholia this time of year.  The knowledge that this happens every year and I can't do anything about it doesn't seem to help much.


I'm back to The Old City next week for work and family.  That's two reasons to be warped off center.  I'm trying to continue my long long long ballet of deception with The Evil Empire.  I'm trying to be comfortable with my questionable behavior.  I'm a master of self-justification when it suits my purposes.  Part of the difficulty this time is that I have to spend a couple of days with a co-worker who isn't aware that I've moved far far far away from my territory and wouldn't be supportive if he knew.  It's one thing to be hyper-vigilant for an hour conference call and another altogether to do it for a few days.  Eventually I have to stick my foot in my mouth.  I'm going to say: "Boy, it sure was a rainy summer" when, in fact, it was not.


"You know, you could be honest about it and just quit if it makes you feel so bad," my sponsor pointed out.
"Hello?  Hello?" I say.  "I'm having some trouble with the connection here."


And my family, oh, yes.  My mother is very very very excited to see me right up to the point when I start to explain why I can't completely mold my schedule around the several frankly odd things that she has pre-scheduled.  I never never never question the origin of my Control Freak button.  I know who installed that.


"Can't you cancel your dentist appointment?" she asked, ignoring the fact that I had to make the appointment 6 weeks ago and I'm only in town for 3 business days.  She knew when I was coming shortly after I did.


People do fit us into categories.  They're happy happy happy with us when we step obligingly into the space they've created.  Not so much when we try to go our own way.


Sometimes I don't feel so great and I don't know why.  I have to do the work to figure out what's going on.  Sometimes I find something real and sometimes I'm drifting drifting drifting off into Free Floating Anxiety Land, and that's OK, too.  We all get to be disconnected.  And sometimes I'm around people or in situations or enduring weather patterns that I can't control.  Sometimes they aren't that great, either.  It's not always my fault.


All I can do is to work on finding my place in what's going on.

Walk a Mile in My Shoes.

I love the diversity of The Program.  I have learned so much over the years because I've made friends from all walks of life.  The Book says "we are people who would not ordinarily mix."  It compares our Fellowship to the different kinds of people in a lifeboat leaving a stricken ocean liner.  A tremendous sense of camaraderie exists despite differences of class, money and education, born of the knowledge that everyone has escaped a terrible fate.


That being said I'm also glad that there are people around whose story line is similar to mine.  It's great being able to talk over a specific problem with someone who may have experience with that specific situation.  And sometimes my problems are not of the low-bottom variety --  OK, they're almost never of the low-bottom variety -- at which point it's nice to be able to talk with someone who is in similar circumstances.  That doesn't mean I can only be helped by specific drunks, just that it's comforting to talk to someone who has walked a mile in your shoes. 


For instance, if a member is having trouble with a child it would hardly be compassionate for someone with no kids to say: "Well, you should just be grateful that you're a parent."  While we should be grateful for what we have that doesn't mean it's not upsetting when a difficult situation arises.  

A Glamorous Life

Dude spoke at the meeting this morning: "I was 16 the first time I had a drink of wine.  I liked it so much that I drank as much as I could as often as I could."


"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.  The sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false."
Glamour:     Magic; enchantment; magic spell or charm.
Glamorize:  To make something glamorous.


I was told growing up that alcohol and drugs weren't good for me, then I tried them.  Boy, did I disagree with that advice; I felt like I hadn't been receiving accurate information.  It felt like the adults were lying to me.  Drinking and using made the bad go bye-bye.  I vaguely sensed that what I was doing wasn't going to be good for me in the long run but I was really addicted to the relief that the alcohol and drugs provided.  The adults should have said: "This stuff is going to make you feel better in the short term but really cause problems in the long run."  I would have respected that more than "Just say no."  I would have kept drinking, of course, coming up with some other kind of excuse.
  
I need to keep getting this information.  The problem with me -- one of many -- is that I glamorize my past when it comes to drinking.  It was a real problem solver and it was cheap, easily obtainable, and fast-acting, unlike all of this %^$!! work I have to do in recovery.  

Non-Specific Prayers

One of the non-specific prayers that I offer up every morning, especially if I have something troubling going on or something confusing or, most commonly, something that I'm trying to dictate the outcome of . . . where was I?  Oh, yes, the prayer.  It's along the lines of: "Please show me the path I should take with this issue."  That sounds pretty prissy and not at all like something I would actually say.  My prayer to a Higher Power who is perfectly capable of taking any lip and attitude I can dish out and is not at all offended by my foul language is more along the lines of: "Hey, what the %$!! should I do here?"


I think the goal is to try to avoid the brick walls and to spot the tree-lined paths leading to pleasant little parks.  It's inevitable that every now and then I'm going to go nose-first into a brick wall and overlook the pleasant park.  I'm only human.  The idea today is to quit walking into the brick wall over and over again, hoping that my nose battering finally brings the thing down.  And I try to quit saying: "Hey, I don't want to go to that wuss park.  Where's the trail to the Black Sabbath concert?"


There's a Simpson's episode much beloved in the Horseface household where Homer is floating along in a canoe when he comes to a fork in the river.  One side is full of flowers and birds and rainbows and the other side looks like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.


"Hmm.  Wonder which way I should go?" Homer muses.


For instance, when we were pondering the big move from The Old City to The New City it was tempting to engage my self-locomotion and force the issue.  Instead, I tried to indicate what it was that I wanted to do but to agree to try, to the best of my ability, to listen to the soft, still voice of my conscience.  There were green lights and there were red lights and there were a hell of a lot of yellow lights.  I think the trick was to choose an outcome and head that way.  I don't believe that is an improper use of the will.  I believe we get to make choices and decisions down here, to the best of our ability, trying to listen for the occasional tap on the shoulder or box to the ear, then change direction accordingly.


When you come to a fork in the road, take it.