Greasy Vans and the Patience of Job

I wrote not long ago about a meeting I attended where a few new people shared stories about how irritated and frustrated they were at the minor irritations and frustrations encountered in day to day living that - if they keep slogging away and trudging onward in their spiritual  growth - they won't find nearly as irritating and frustrating in the future.  My inclination is to point out how much time they're wasting, how much emotional energy they're expending, on matters that won't mean anything in short order.  You know: spouses trying our patience or car troubles or unpleasant customers, that sort of thing. but even then I try to be as kind as possible, realizing that alcoholics are experts at blowing mouse-sized problems into elephant-sized problems, and when you're new this is a lot easier to do.  Instead, I try to find an experience in my experiential repertoire that shows how lovely this peaceful progression is.  Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes real fucking slowly.

I was waiting at a crosswalk preparing to cross a busy street a few days ago.  If you've never been to Southern California you may not be familiar with our busy streets here.  Apparently no road has ever been built that has fewer than ninety lanes.  It's not unusual for an intersection to have three left turn lanes - three! - and for the walk signs to allow you thirty seconds to cross the street - thirty! - while you experience a mild sense of panic watching the counter approach zero while you're still crossing the street, the brisk pace you think you're maintaining apparently not as brisk as you think.  In other words you don't not cross a street against the light, even if there are no cars approaching.  They can materialize out of nowhere.  

Anyway, An old, beater van pulls up next to me in the right lane - one of those lanes that permit you to continue forward or to turn right so unless the car is using a turn signal you are sort of in the dark.  There's a lot of shit piled up on the dashboard and I can see through the greasy windowshield that the driver is texting, so when the light changes and the little strolling man glyph pops up on the crosswalk sign across the street, I don't budge an inch, trying to peer through the murk to catch the driver's eye.  My sole aim is to not get run over.  This was SoCal pedestrian survival mode and not any kind of testosterone-fueled challenge to the driver.  Apperently the ne'er-do-well driving interpreted this as aggressive judgment on my part so he rolled down his window and shouted something at me along the lines of "slow" or "stupid" or some other "S" word.  Frankly, it takes about an hour to get across one of these super-roads so I had no interest in stopping mid-walk to argue with him or explain myself.  Even more frankly, it bothered me not a bit.  In fact, I recall giggling a little.  It is now in my DNA to slough off the impatience that once impelled me into an argument or an obscene gesture.  I was in no way, shape, or form bothered by this grease-ball and I'm just joking when I use that word: who knows what kind of tough life this man is enduring?  Pretty tough from the shape of his vehicle.

This is how I absorbed the message of Right Living when I was getting sober.  Show me what you did and not what I should do.

Reasons. Not Excuses.

We seldom do anything with great joy.  Most of us are animated only when it serves a purpose and not because of a genuine enthusiasm.  We're too full  of ifs and oughts to find reasons to rejoice.  Sometimes a change can jar us into an awareness of life, and that life is intended to be much simpler than what we make it out to be.  If only we can move out of fear and be able to enjoy life minute by minute.

I have no friends from college or any places of employment pre-recovery.  That's a solid twelve years.  That's a long period of time to develop some relationships and it's an amazing fact that I was not able to develop any at all.  I was busy for much of this time but not that busy.  I'm out of the Excuses business and into the Reasons business and the reason is this: I was drinking and using.  By myself much of the time and when I was with people I was still by myself, more or less, the goal always being to get away from these people so I could drink and use.  While I admit to being a liar and an embellisher and exaggerator I am not making this up.

Flight S.O.B.'s Unite!

Cherokee wisdom for today: "Lovely or unlovely, nothing stays the same.  It cannot.  It grows into something newer and better, or it gives why where it is.  Life is a living, moving force at every moment.  We would not have that change - but to live happily we must change.  We cannot allow ourselves to crystallize until we are inflexible.  There is too much to shatter us if we cannot bend.  To enjoy the present moment is to have the innate knowledge that the next one and the next can be even better."

The only constant in life is change.  I gotta adapt or it'll kill me.

I maintain - again - that One Day At A Time is a good basis for living well.  Right here - Right now.  If I had to base my existence on one concept it would be the imperative to be present.  Not in the future where terrible things are happening to me or in the past reliving the terrible things I did.

I am still obsessed with the workings of the human mind.  Maybe this is a type of control obsession.  Maybe this is because the human mind is such a weird-ass, unpredictable beast, making choices for reasons that of which we are blissfully unaware and running the show more than we'd like to admit.  If you think I'm making this up I suggest meditation.  THEN you'll see who's running the show.  Spoiler: it's not the You that you think you are.  It's this force that is darting and veering and screaming into the night.

I listened to a podcast that explored time and time management.  One of the central premises is that the people who struggle the most in this arena are those with too little time to get everything accomplished and - oddly enough - people with too much time on their hands.  The psychologist involved suggested keeping a journal where one logs personal activity separated into half hour increments.  I thought: "Why not?"  I'm one of those people with a lot of free time and I'm often surprised at the end of the day how much I accomplish and - more irritating - how much I don't get done.  It seems to me there's usually enough time to do all of my stuff even accounting for time-consuming chores - like grocery shopping and car repairs and house cleaning - as well as serendipitous interruptions - like a neighbor stopping by to chat or a phone call from an irritating member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Here's my take after a week or two of doing this: I am a fidgety, fidgety son of a bitch.  I have trouble staying on task for a half hour at a time with the result that it's not unusual to look at a segment, see a thing listed that should take fifteen minutes, and realize I don't know what I did the rest of the time.  Can you see why sitting still on a twelve hour flight is roughly equivalent to a root canal with no anesthesia?  Part of this, I think, is due to the fact that I have an overactive imagination and my mind is always flitting here and there, and part of it is because I'm unfocused.

Go Home and Come Back

"Jealousy is never hidden. It is totally ignorant of the fact that we have to go within ourselves for things that lift or lower us.  What belongs to each of us has nothing to do with anyone else.  To be jealous is to be miserable.  If we can't hold our own we can go home and get ready and come back.  But to have animosity toward everyone who threatens cannot cultivate good in anything."

My Buddy Chivas

Life gets lifey sometimes.

If you keep doing what you've been doing you'll keep getting what you've been getting.

Tolerant:  Showing willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with; a willingness to accept the belief, habits, feelings, or behaviors of another group, culture, etc. as legitimate even if they differ from one's own.  (Ed. Note: Funny how the word 'willingness' keeps popping up . . .  )

From the text of Tradition Three: "Our Foundation office asked each group to send in its list of 'protective' regulations.  The total list was a mile long.  If all those rules had been in effect everywhere, nobody could have possibly joined A.A. . . "

Here are a few phrases that pop up after that surprising and hilarious sentence: "pretty intolerant;" "After all, isn't fear the true basis of intolerance?"  "Could we then foresee that troublesome people were to become our principal teachers of patience and tolerance?"

When I ask people who have gone out why they picked up a drink again, what their mind set was, what happened, the reasons are mundane, insignificant, and boring.  Lazy and self-serving reasons.  The reasons are so shitty that they're actually excuses and not reasons.  No one - I repeat: no one - has ever told me that a relative just died in a car accident or that they recently learned they were diagnosed with some horrible, fatal disease.  They just drink.  They want to drink, they're not spiritually fit, they're not plugged in, and they just drink.  One young guy who had accumulated about ninety days was at a gathering, saw a bottle of Chivas Regal, and poured himself a drink.  "Seemed like a good idea," he told me.

That's his new nickname.  Chivas.  "Good morning, Chivas, good to see you!"  I can be such an asshole.

I told a Chicago guy once that I liked to party.  He said that I was drinking, not partying.  I mentioned to another Chicago guy that I didn't know why I kept relapsing.  He said that I wasn't relapsing, I was continuing to drink, that you had to actually quit drinking in the first place to relapse.

Irritating, these Chicago guys.

But a lot of irritating guys listened patiently when I talked - if by "talking" you mean "spewing nonsense" - and planted good ideas in my head, ideas that I took and used to build a good life.  They never told me what I had to do - they told me what they did and how it worked out for them, the implication being that I could try it out or not or I could try something totally different, that the idea was to try things different than the ones I was currently using which clearly weren't working out very well.

The Anvils of Experience

"There is no organization which more jealously guards the individual's right to think, talk, and act as he wishes.  No A.A. can compel another to do anything.  Nobody can be punished or expelled.  The A.A. member has to conform to the principles of recovery.  His life actually depends upon obedience to spiritual principles.  He learns that the clamor of desires and ambitions within him must be silenced whenever these could damage the group.  It becomes plain that the  group must survive or the individual will not."  They add the phrase "anvils of experience."  Isn't that a great phrase?  

The anvils of experience.  Bill came up with some great phrases.

Hope and Love

You can be loving all the time.  This is your choice.  You may not have a reason to love, but you can love because to love makes you so happy.  Love in action only produces happiness.  Love will give you inner peace.  It will change your perception of everything.  Suffering?  It makes you feel safe because you know it so well.  But there is really no reason to suffer.  The only reason you suffer is because you choose to suffer.  If you look at your life you will find many excuses to suffer, but a good reason to suffer you will not find."  Toltecs, baby, Toltecs.  These guys had some serious shit going  on.

My little walk through the Toltec book is coming to an end.  The author is concluding with a couple of prayers and this is his intro to the prayer itself: "Please take a moment to close your eyes, open your heart, and feel all the  love that comes from your heart.  I want you to join me in your mind and in your heart, to feel a very strong connection of love."

Our neighbor has a rescue dog that was plucked from the mean streets of Mexico.  This dog is the happiest dog in the history of the universe.  The name she was given in the rescue kennel was Hope and a more appropriate name I cannot imagine.  Her tail is in constant motion and she is overjoyed - thrilled! - to see anyone and everyone.  It looks like she is meeting everyone for the first time or that the person approaching is her best friend in the world, someone she hasn't seen in forever.

I fancy myself a dog person.  I usually lower myself to the dog's level - often plopping my ass right down on the pavement - and I whisper sweet nothings into their ears.  Dogs know love and they really respond to this.  I'm acquainted with a number of these animals who react enthusiastically as soon as they pick up my scent.  But Hope?  This dog thinks I'm god.  I also give her a mini carrot which she receives as if it were choice filet mignon so this might have something to do with her affection but - seriously - she loses her shit when she sees me.  It's one of the highlights of my day to see this dog.  It's a perfect manifestation of love in my eyes.