Hang In There

"If you view life through the eyes of an artist, then life is no longer a work of art; rather, it becomes a series of goals to achieve and contests to win.  You are happy when things go 'right' and upset when they go 'wrong.'  Viewing life this way can make for a very difficult experience."                        The Toltecs

I used to look at art - Art - with a bored and skeptical eye.  I thought it was something that needed to be "understood" to be appreciated.   I would go to a big art museum believing that I had to look at every piece of art and read everything posted about every piece of art that I looked at.  It was frustrating, exhausting, and boring, to be honest about it, standing in front of a painting, vaguely aware that the gallery had dozens more paintings to be "gotten through."  Like I can't look at the sun setting over the ocean without knowing "why" the scene was so moving.  It's lovely!  It's beautiful!  It's calming! It's a wonderful experience! I don't need to read up on why the colors are pleasing to the eye or why nature can be so centering.  I like it; I look at it; I go home and eat dinner, better for the experience, happier for the experience.

I have some art books on my desk and I try to spend a few minutes looking at art each day.  I'm trying to balance actually following through on picking up the book and not beating my obsessive-compulsive TypeA ass up when I don't pick one up - it's meant to be fun and illuminating, not a chore like picking weeds in the hots sun.  I've learned a lot about art but not as much as I've forgotten.  I was kind of agitated this morning, the prayer and meditation barely making a dent in my agita, so I picked up one of the books, looked at three pictures - Three!  Just Three! - and immediately calmed down.  I read the short blurbs on each of the pictures which cued me into some stuff I wouldn't have noted before and stuff I'll probably forget about but who cares?  These were masterful works and I enjoyed all of them, aware that sometimes a painting will leave me uninvolved.  Today, when SuperK and I go to a museum we spend an hour in a gallery, sit down and rest our feet with a cup of coffee, and then dip back in for another half hour and that's it.  We're full.  We're done.  And I've found that some of the joy comes in the reflective reaction that comes later.  I feel better after the fact than I do while I'm doing the actual looking.  The beauty has seeped in and affected me but it takes some time for that emotion to be realized.  It's akin to watching my breath as I meditate - even though my mind flits about, here and there, near and anon, I end up with a calmer, more focused day.  What's better - anticipating a roller coaster ride, dropping down that first drop, or howling about the excitement with your friends as you exit the ride?  I never want to go to an art museum; I enjoy-ish the experience when I'm there, and I'm a bigger, better, badder dude for having experienced the experience.

Try this: pick out an incredibly famous piece of art, pull it up on your computer, and then look at it for ten minutes.  That's a long, long time.  You'll get bored and antsy but hang in there.  I bet you'll notice something in minute seven that you missed at the outset.  I read about a guy who went to a museum and spent an hour in front of a painting for 100 days.  I could not do that but I enjoyed reading about it.  He became kind of a minor celebrity at the museum.  He noticed things that eluded him on the first few viewings.  He hung in there.

Hang in there!

So Many Decisions

One of the young people I talk to regularly in The Fellowship is a woman whose father was never a presence in her life.  And to make bad matters worse, he's currently homeless and drug-addicted.  Her aunt is in touch with him periodically so she gets general updates but not much more than that.  She's a pretty fierce person and has slotted her father into a safe slot - she doesn't talk about him and is relatively comfortable with the status quo.  What are you going to do, right?  People make decisions that affect us and that's their right, even when the decisions are selfish and harm us.  The world can be a bitch.  All of us deserve a loving family and a safe place to live and enough to eat but not all of us are going to get all of those things.  We can deal with it or we can bitch and whine and complain and change absolutely nothing.

She got a message from her aunt that her father had a gift for her.  Given her past experiences she was sure that it would come to naught but - lo and behold! - her aunt stopped by with $2,000, all in twenties, most of the bills soiled and well-worn.  I spoke with her about this, miraculously refraining from telling her what to do -  who better than me to run your life, right?  given my skills in having successfully navigating the ups and downs of my world - while tossing out different suggestions about how she might respond.  My closest A.A. friends do this with me.  From time to time and more often than I'd expect they'll come up with a suggestion that is perfect for the situation, one that I simply hadn't thought of.  Often I'll end up doing something that had already occurred to me but every now and then I'll say "Huh.  That's perfect.  That's perfect" and I'll go that route.  Ultimately, we all need to find our own way and make decisions based on our own knowledge and intuition.  There's very rarely a perfectly right way or a perfectly wrong way.  If she had said she was going to keep the money and send her dad a letter telling him to fuck off I would have chimed in as that would have been pretty obviously a bad action but - other than that kind of egregious behavior - the decision is not mine.

She ended up keeping the money.  I think this is a great, great decision, one that honors her father and his efforts.  For him to collect that much money and keep it secure in an unsecured environment was quiet an accomplishment, quite an effort, and she honored him by accepting the gift.  One of the weirder and more difficult skills I had to learn was accepting a compliment graciously.  When I pass something along to a friend or loved one I'd rather not hear: "Oh, you don't have to do that."  No shit I don't have to do that.   I'm doing that because I want to do it.

Lot of wisdom in that decision.  I'm guessing she's second-guessing the decision but that's what we do.  And who knows how it plays out?  Sometimes I make what I think is the right and most appropriate decision and down the road it doesn't make things better.   All I can do is the best I can do at the time with the skills and information I have at hand.  All I can do is take what I think is the next Right Action and then see what God has in store for me and everyone else.

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