Pity V Empathy V Sympathy, Oh My.

"No matter what your circumstances may be, you always have a choice.  Don't give it away by making the statement 'I have to' and believing it.  Nothing breaks stagnation like remembering you have a choice.  Next time you feel obligated to do something, remember that you don't really have to unless you want to."

The Toltecs

From the Grapevine:  "When I took the Seventh Step, I had to give God the good and the bad, to do with as he saw fit, not as I saw fit.  I don't get to decide which is which any more than I get to decide what he sees fit to remove and when it gets removed, I just had to be totally willing.  It's God's time, not mine.  That's when people started noticing, even before I did.  Over time, God started taking away some of my defects of character, that quite frankly, I didn't even think were defects until people started complimenting me for no longer behaving in the way I once thought perfectly acceptable.  Who knew?"

A lot of the time I can confuse pity with compassion.  I want to be compassionate, to have concern for the well-being of someone else while at the same time respecting their free will.  It means being present for someone while respecting their strengths and capabilities.  I try to make myself willing to help but only if the other person wants that help.

Pity:  An emotion defined as a sympathetic sorrow, sadness, or compassion evoked by the suffering, distress, or misfortunes of others. While it can act as a bridge to empathy, it can also carry negative connotations of condescension or contempt when it implies a sense of superiority over the person receiving it.

Empathy:  The ability to understand, share, and experience another person's emotions from their perspective. It bridges the gap between individuals by allowing you to step into someone else's shoes and vicariously feel their emotional state without taking it on as your own

Pity is feeling sorry for someone and assuming that I have the capability to fix whatever I think needs fixing.  It means trying to carry their pain for them instead of allowing them to discover their own ability to change what they don't like for the better.  Pity is when I let my concern for others overtake me, make me want to step in and make decisions for them, help them when they should be helping themselves.

We carry the message - we don't carry the drunk.

Happy BD, Willie!

My dear friend Willie has been sober for 32 years today.  That's a long time although I have a sneaking suspicion he still thinks it's okay to drink on weekends and holidays.  We call that California Sober.  My stance on anniversaries (in most of the country) or birthdays (here on the Left Coast) is to balance gratitude - I do not stay sober on my own, without a Higher Power and the support of The Fellowship - but I do not stay sober without personally doing a lot of work.  So I share the date with my friends.  I hope it lets new people see that it can actually be done - because I was not a high bottom drunk - and because it's a gift I can give to the people who have been with me every step of the way.  With some spiritual growth comes the ability to actually be happy for the successes and achievements of others instead of stewing in a pot of envy and jealousy.

Here's the SoCal way:

Happy Birthday to you.

Happy Birthday to you.

Happy Biiiiiiirrrrrthday, dear Willie.

Happy Birthday to you.

Keep coming back . . . . . Sober!

One of my little fantasies is to return to the open Saturday night speaker meeting in North Indianapolis, the site of my first halting foray into the world of Alcoholics Anonymous.  I clearly remember the buzz of good energy in the room - the loudness and laughter and vibrancy surprised the hell out of me - and the fact that I was very, very suspicious of the motives of the guys suggesting I buy something called The Big Book.  I assumed that was the grift - sell merchandise and make money - so I lied and said I didn't have the money, but the guys got around that crap by telling me to just take the Book then and pay them back whenever I came up with the cash (I still have that Book, well used and in deplorable shape but full of notes and underlinings that mean a lot to me today).  I was also flummoxed at the lead that night - a guy who ran moonshine somewhere in the Deep South, spent a lot of time in jail, differences that I used for a while to keep a distance between me and recovery.  I was definitely NOT looking for the similarities.

I talk to anyone new who comes to the Keep It Complicated meeting that has anchored my California sobriety.  I do this with a spirit of service and love while fully aware that most of these people are not going to stay sober - at least not now - and that they're going to come and go no matter what I do.  I'm not cynical at all because I know that It Takes What It Takes.  Maybe I'm the flimsy reed they grab onto?  I remember the moonshine-running hillbilly from West Virginia who told his story to a roomful of laughing drunks almost 40 years ago.  He helped to hook me.  I like the imagery of all the regular members of a group holding onto fishing lines with hooks on the end so that if you're new, walking through our midst, maybe one of the hooks will grab you.

Where Are You Right Now?

"You take yourself too seriously!  You are too damn important in your own mind.  That must be changed!"

Carlos Castaneda

Today I can remember that I am no better - and no worse - than anyone else.

Go With the Flow is a good reminder to help me stop going against the current of life.  When I find myself worn out I need to check to see if it's the result of swimming against today's current.

The more I pursue the elusive, just out of reach, state of serenity and peacefulness that I crave, the more I run into the concept of Mindful living.  Being in the moment, staying in the moment, aware of sounds and touch and coolness and warmth, One Day at a Time in A.A. speak.  How much of my life is on autopilot!  My brain taking care of a task that isn't in front of me while I'm oblivious to what's happening to me, right now.

Here's a story: a Washington newspaper commissioned a study where they paid a violinist to busk in a local subway station.  In the time he was playing about 2,000 people passed by, either coming or going, many of them busy with work and families and understandably preoccupied, living in the future or the past and not in the present.  Cameras showed that 6 people paused to listen for a while.  6/2,000 = .003 or three tenths of a percent.  A rounding error.  Statistically insignificant.  A sure bet.   Here's the catch: the busker was a world famous violinist playing one of the most difficult Beethoven violin concertos written by that musical genius on a 3 1/2 million dollar violin.

Talk about a missed opportunity

Made Up Medical Specialities

So I took the only action available to bring some calmness and balance into my life vis-a-vis my odd heart rhythms and skipped beats and I went to the doctor.  I don't really mind going to the doctor because they rarely find anything alarming or concerning.  My old self would imagine that I had some alarming or concerning disease or condition that was going to kill me dead in a cruel and imaginative way while not going to the doctor, apparently preferring to Imagine the Worst from the privacy of my own home.  Take action or fret myself into a tizzy?  In this current situation I did the next indicated thing.  I realized that it's going to be hard to stay calm when I can hear the Grim Reaper rustling around in the bushes outside my bedroom window, sharpening his scythe, and my years in Alcoholics Anonymous have given me great regard for calmness.  Or does The Reaper carry a sickle?  I can't remember.  Maybe he's a modern Reaper, adapting to the times, packing a Glock and wearing a bullet proof vest.  Wouldn't put it past the Angel of Death.  After all it's not like the old days when he could unleash an army of rats carrying fleas into the general populace and let the Bubonic Plague wipe out half the population of Europe.  THAT was the Grim Reaper that had some clout.

Nothing significant presented itself which wasn't surprising given the fact that my symptoms are intermittent and sporadic.  That's the good news.  But nothing definitive presented itself, either.  My doctor didn't say: "What?  Get the fuck out of here" and send me on my way with a friendly pat on the ass.  He asked me to make an appointment with a cardiologist for some further tests.  A cardiologist!  I don't think I ever had an appointment with a medical specialist before this year when I've seen an endodontist, have an upcoming appointment with an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor to remove a growth on my tongue, and been advised to visit a Cardiologist.  Frankly, I had always assumed that those were just made up words that doctors used when they were stumped by something.  They'd send you off to the periodontist hoping that you'd be too confused and intimidated to do anything.  Then, when you came back later with the same symptoms they'd ask, with a smug look on their face: "Well, what did the proctologist have to say about that?"  When you admitted you hadn't actually seen the rheumatologist they could wash their hands of the whole affair.

Taking good action beats worrying about The Unknown.  This I know to be true.  It's comforting to know that I have health insurance and good health care practitioners.  No one is shouting: "What the fuck!  What the fuck is that thing on your tongue!?  Get away from me with that thing!"  Today I feel a great sense of calm: it isn't a critical problem but it isn't completely resolved.  Taking the action was the thing.  When I need to do something and I don't do it or when I need to wait patiently and then rush headlong into the maelstrom . . . that's when the problems arise.  So, I have a cardiologist appointment in a month.  Best I can do.

"I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect."

Gibbon

No Way, Jose

"Fanaticism describes a rigid attachment to knowledge with an excessive intolerance of opposing views.  It is driven by a need to believe in something 100 percent . . . Anything that contradicts or puts into question the sustainability of the belief is a direct threat, and a fanatic will defend the belief at any cost."

We exist in a highly polarized political world right now, one where it often boils down to Us versus Them, or Me versus You.  Every so often I get sucked into a conversation with a Fanatic who holds opposing views and - much more rarely - I try to "reason" with this person.  Hoo Dog, what a waste of my time!  I have no problem with trying to see an issue from a different viewpoint but where I get into trouble is when I'm engaged with someone who is discarding facts and reason to defend their beliefs.  The shit people believe!  There's naturally a lot of nuance in deciding whether or not a government should spend this or that amount of money on the military or social programs or health care.  That makes sense.  But some people refuse to open their minds to an opposing viewpoint, preferring instead to be spoon-fed dubious information that supports their point of view.  I'm sure I do it to some degree but Alcoholics Anonymous has suggested that my serenity will be well serviced if I learn to pause and consider, to see if my point of view is supported with facts and reason, and - guess what? - sometimes I'm living on bullshit, too.

No way, Jose.

It reminds me of my first few years in A.A. where you could NOT tell me anything that knocked me off whatever preconceived notions I had.  It was only through hard experience and repeated failures that I learned that maybe - just maybe  - my way wasn't the best way.  Shooting heroin and driving a car?  But I'm a good driver!  Drinking a twelve pack during lunch break?  But I'm a great employee!

"Everything will come and go in front of you, but you will remain the same."

The Buddha

"He lived a short distance from his own body."

James Joyce

Goddam Ducks

No one is normal - it just looks that way from across the street.

When we're in public, to fit in and be accepted, we often present an image of ourselves that we think others wish to see.  This image reflects who we think we're supposed to be and how we think we're supposed to act,  In reality, this image exists only in your mind.  Trying to live up to that image only leads to suffering.  When it's not benefiting you or the other person, drop your image and be who you are.

I normally sleep like a dead man.  Last night I slept like a dead man being tormented by a ghost and not a good ghost.  A bad ghost.  I normally can't remember my dreams, either.  I suggest that this is either because I have a clean conscience, devoid of any tormenting ghosts, or I'm a sociopath, devoid of any sense of right and wrong with consequently no guilt or remorse about past bad behavior.  My final bout of fitful sleep concluded with a weird scenario where I was trying to sleep on a picnic table close to the ocean but a large bird of some type kept sitting on my head area.  I remember, vaguely, a duck or water fowl.  I kept squirming around and shoving at the duck but it would not be dislodged.  Finally, I woke up with a shout.  A shout!  I yelled out loud!  THAT snapped me wide-awake.  I wonder if I thought I was being smothered?  A duck!  Why didn't I just grab the duck's neck and strangle the shit out of it?  What does a duck weigh?  Like ten pounds?  I weigh 185!  And I have teeth which the duck does not have!

Clearly the message that was being sent by my subconscious is "You do not have anything to write about today so you're just wasting everyone's time."

Remembering

One of the most common experiences of traveling to other countries and experiencing other cultures is to see that the practice of honoring those who came before us is a universal one.  I'm not sure in The States that we are quite as engaged in communing with people beyond the grave.  In my Quiet Time I spend a minute imagining all my predecessors sitting around a table which is nestled in the clouds, everyone relaxed and smiling, unhurried, bemused and tolerant, not doing anything in particular beyond sitting quietly together, enjoying the minute.  It has helped me immensely over the years to lose any resentments that linger over how crappy a job they did in raising me.  They did not, of course, do a crappy job - it's more that I'm a negative son of a bitch who likes to concentrate on defects and shortcomings instead of strengths and attributes.  Moreover, as we say, no baby comes into the world with a personalized instruction manual and I was a complicated, defective model from the git-go.

In Vietnam I took a walk one morning on the raised paths that separate flooded rice paddies.  Every so often there would be a small shrine at an intersection that would have a burning candle, some food treats, fresh flowers, little gifts and mementoes inside, and the villagers would stop for a brief moment and remember their forebears.  I liked this a lot.  Not flashy or complicated, not time-consuming, not a big public display, more of a "Hey, howya doin' this morning?  I remember you.  The good you.  The best you."  For me this remembering is a very centering thing to do.  It helps my perspective on life, on how it comes and goes until eventually it all goes, and I'm just the spirit in that shrine.