What's the Big Rush?

I like this Zen reminder: "If you try too hard to do more than your  best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough.  When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself, and it will take you longer to accomplish your goal.  Just do your best because if you do your best there is no way you can judge yourself."

Here's a Buddhist Proverb: A student told a master that he was going to meditate for four hours each day and wondered how long it would take him to reach enlightenment.  "About ten years."  The student - who sounds like an alcoholic if you ask me, or at least he's behaving like one - told the master that he would meditate for eight hours a day, then, goddammit, so now how long would it take to reach enlightenment?  He was in a hurry!  He wanted to rush through meditation and rush into enlightenment and then what would he do?  In a big hurry?

Here's the master's reply: "You  are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life.  You are here to live, to be happy, and to love.  If you can do your best in two hours of meditation, but you spend eight hours instead, you will only grow tired, miss the point, and you won't enjoy your life.  Do your best, and perhaps you will learn that no matter how long you meditate, you can live, love, and be happy."

Another reminder that the theme of our Twelfth Step is the joy of living, that I get sober so that I can have a full and productive life.  I find that I cope better if I stay involved in my recovery but that the whole point is to have some fun and peace of mind.  I'm not a dude who's going to sit in an A.A. clubhouse and go to four meetings a day.  I can barely pay attention for an hour four times a week.

I am not as interesting as I think I am.

No one is thinking about me.  No one is doing anything to me.  I'm not that important.

I went to a doctor for a number of years who was the definition of a curmudgeon.  So I loved him, of course.  I love No Bullshit people.  He had a small sheet of paper on the wall of his exam room that looked like he put it together after an annoying day when he was in a bad mood.  It had things like "You do not get to talk about more than two issues.  I have other patients."  and my personal favorite "No matter how sick you think you are I'm dealing with other patients who are sicker than you."