My Little Man's an Idiot

"Facts are stubborn things."

John Adams

"Ain't we got all the fools in town on our side?  And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?
Huck Finn

I got a text yesterday from a friend in The Program - a friend who is not effusive in their emotions - asking about the wisdom of sponsoring a person of the opposite sex.  The conventional wisdom is that this is not a great idea.  We can have good intentions and still allow attention from - in some world, in some life - someone who might be a possible mate to sway us and color our emotions.  I work like Hercules trying to stay neutral when I'm dealing with another person and I try to stay neutral even though I have a strong opinion and even though I'm a genius who is always right and should be appointed The Supreme Leader of the Universe and of All Its Many Life Forms.  That would be a tough thing to fit on my name tag but I still like it.  My M.O. is to ask questions, to refer back to a passage or story in The Big Book that might apply, to encourage the uncertain questioner to get feedback from lot of other alcoholics and to sit quietly, listen to that small, still voice.  My desire to run The Show, to tell other people how to behave, to imply that I have All The Answers can overwhelm my Intentions.

There's a Seinfeld episode where George is struggling with a decision and Kramer tells him to listen to the Little Man inside - what is the Little Man saying?  George: "My Little Man doesn't know.  (Comedic pause.)  Ahhhh, my Little Man's an idiot!"

Yes.  My Little Man can be an idiot, too.

Then, because my Morning Meditation currently includes a story out of the latest Grapevine, I read this: "I don't actually know what's best for anyone else.  That's my ego.  It says what's right for me is right for all.  How freeing this knowledge is, this wisdom.  I, an alcoholic, have had a spiritual awakening as the result of working A.A.'s Twelve Steps, one which gives me a very good sober life.  That doesn't mean I need to tell anyone else what they should do.  How scary, too, to my ego at least. It means simply being available for a fellow alcoholic, rather than being in command or control.  It means a lot of letting go."

All Over the Place This Morning :)

 "Remember - you are not a helpless bystander to the tyranny of your mind.  By becoming aware of your thoughts you can help set the tone for your day and night. "                                                             The Toltecs

You have given your mind free reign to do whatever it wants for so long that it won't give this control up easily.  Minds are made to think so when we try to redirect them onto a calmer, more peaceful track they're not happy about it.  They resist.  They push back.  They shove back.

We give people what they need and not what they want, not what we want them to need.

How about today we say nice things to everyone we run into?  Come up with something nice, something complimentary, something to let that person know that you see them and appreciate them.  I'll tell you it's a lot easier than being a prick.

"We ought to hear at least one little song every day, read a good poem, see a first-rate painting, and if possible speak a few sensible words."                                                                                                  Von Goethe     

Some people need a lot of attention and some people don't.  How about today we let the independent folks do their thing, chalking up any silence or distance as their modus operandi, while lavishing some extra time on those who process the events of their lives by sharing with others?  I'll tell you that it's harder to deal with those who are on the opposite end of the spectrum.

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself - it's thinking of yourself less."                                                 C.S. Lewis

"Humility is the quality of having a modest, accurate view of one's own importance, accompanied by a lack of pride and an openness to others."

"When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom."                                         Proverbs 11:2

Meet Them at the Door, Laughing

 This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

This is a poem by the Sufi mystic poet Rumi that I heard for the first time while doing a guided meditation.  Mostly I sit quietly when I meditate but sometimes I listen to a teacher.  Sometimes I'm too energized and distracted to sit quietly and I need some guidance.

What a great poem!  Once again I learn that it's all okay, it's all part of the journey, I can learn something from everything.  When I try to control the outcomes and the circumstances - always pleasant and always in my favor, of course (More money! More sex!! More power!!!) - my day turns to shit, it becomes an exercise of wrestling with Existential Dread, afraid I'm not going to get what I want or that I'm going to lose whatever I already have.  I cannot stress enough the misery that this flavor of life approach brings to me.  I cannot believe that I once thought I had that kind of power over my life.  I'm the guy being tossed out of my canoe and into the rapids of a raging, rock-filled river, all the while saying: "OK, I'm going to manage this.  I'm not going to swallow any water and I'm going to avoid all the rocks," all of this happening as I'm smashing into the rocks and swallowing river water.  But when I open my arms and welcome life's occasional bullshit into my life I'm much more relaxed and serene.  OK, I never open up my arms but at least I'm not slamming the door shut on my troubles.  I say it often and I'll say it again - I'm more content when I look at things as pleasant and painful and not as good or bad.  Who knows what lessons I'm going to learn from my annoying guests?  

Come on in, teachers.

And a special thanks this morning to Spandex who shared his oh-so-temporary troubles with me last night and graciously listened to me say, with great wisdom and perspective: "Fuck if I know what you should do.  Good luck with all that."  I guess my wisdom is that if I simply listen with attention then the talker will eventually figure out what to do all on their own by listening to their own words, in their own voice.  How many times have I been sharing something only to think: "I should shut up - I sound crazy."

"To maintain your opinion, do you need to ignore or defy other people's opinions or disregard new information that's come to light?  With awareness, say to yourself: 'As a Toltec hunter, I will notice when I start to struggle, so I may see the illusion I am trying to hold on to.  Once recognized, I vow to let it go with ease and grace.' "

Maybe I'm Just Annoying?

"I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you hear."

Toltecs

Have you  ever heard of the concept of The Smoky Mirror?  It refers to the filters that we all have when we're viewing reality.  Whatever we see is distorted by our own beliefs and ideas, or our preconditioned point of view.  This helps me to see my prejudices and it also helps in my relationships with other people.  Am I dealing with the person I see or am I working through a thick haze of smoke, trying to penetrate their belief systems to see what's really going on?  Is it me or is it a show? 

Showtime!

I've come to believe that different people need different things from me.  Or from other people.  I used to have a One Size Fits All approach to life - this is what I like to give and this is what I like to receive and you damn well better fit into this approach.  Remember the square peg in the round hole?  Remember the big hammer?  Remember the sledgehammer?  I have a young guy who texts me almost every day and he almost always says "I love you!" and sometimes this is all he says.  I have other friends who respond to half of my texts.  I don't reply to every text the guy sends me - it's not my preferred form of communication and it's enough with the "I love you!" crap already.  So when my other buddies don't respond to my texts each and every time I don't get my feelings hurt and I'm not upset that I'm always the one who starts the texting chain . . . but, come to think of it, maybe I'm just annoying and that's why they don't respond hmmmm?  Whatever, dude, going to keep doing it.  With my A.A. daughter I believe that when I check in that it's a reminder that someone is thinking about her which is not something she could rely on from her homeless, drug addict real dad before she came into Alcoholics Anonymous.  I don't have to be specific with my emotions or my intentions - it's letting her know someone is paying attention, someone has her best interests in mind.

And I know that those of us who are very self-sufficient can get bent over backwards when - as is going to happen from time to time - a whole swath of tough, painful things, stuff that we could easily handle one at a time, hit us all at once.  This is why it's important to keep those lines of communication open - we don't know when communicating is going to be critical.

What a Jerk

When I was in my early 20s, still stinging from my great failure and ignominious ejection from Optometry College I talked my two best friends in the world - brothers - into making a drug and alcohol-fueled road trip from Ohio across the country to California and back.  I need to stipulate that it was me who was being fueled by drugs and alcohol.  I was digging through some old pictures to share with these guys - still my two best friends in the world - and I can confirm that in every instance I was clearly drunk and/or stoned.  There was often alcohol in the picture.  I listened to a man talk recently about trying to hide his cocaine habit from his loved ones.  He thought he was successful in his subterfuge.  Pshaw.  I was fooling precisely no one and neither was he.

One set of photos detailed a hiking/camping trip that we took on a coastal trail north of San Francisco.  I have no doubt that this was my idea because it was rash and poorly conceived.  We are clearly not prepared for camping in this environment.  After many miles we reached the beautiful campsite right on the Pacific Ocean.  Our plan was to put a tarp on the ground and climb into our sleeping bags after heating up some water on a grill for our freeze-dried meals.  The wind was blowing a gale.  There were bear poles at each site so your food could be stored out of any ursine reach. We were getting vaguely worried, out of our element, all the other sites were equipped with harsh weather tents and were up and thriving.   We struggled to get the coals lit and then to heat the water which -  after a while - turned a gorgeous smoky brown, clearly unfit for human consumption.  We peered at the water for a while, our brains struggling to accept the scope of the unfolding tragedy, until one of the brothers said: "So . . . we outta here?"  One of the greatest lines ever uttered in my presence.  We did manage to make it back to our car, night falling quickly as we hustled to gain shelter before it became pitch black . . . in bear country . . . taking a much shorter route but one that climbed and descended a series of ridges on the return trip.

I don't think I carried in alcohol but I was packing drugs.  The older brother really lit into me when we made it back to the car and deservedly so.  This was typical of my life then and can still be today - impulsive, controlling, oblivious, driving myself and everyone around me relentlessly forward with scant thought of the consequences or the wishes of anyone else.  I wanted to blast down the road like a bat out of hell to a new place each night and to run myself ragged doing so, unconcerned about the welfare of anyone else.  It's not like I didn't care about them - it's that I wanted to do what I wanted to do and it was my job to convince you to follow my lead, often stupid and ill-conceived.  Self!  Most of my memories reveal trying to get what I wanted and to force you into line behind me.  Once again: good intentions, crappy actions.  I sincerely wanted you to be happy, too, but I wanted you to be happy following my lead.

So much of my pre-A.A. life reveals a boy/man who wanted his own way.  I was the actor trying to control the set, the dialogue, the actions of all my fellow actors.   Everything would be great if you did what I wanted!

There was another instance on this trip where I fell asleep in the car as we drove through the night from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, too drunk and high to take my turn at the wheel as we had decided to brave the desert drive at night when the temperature was lower in our car with no air conditioning.  When we arrived at a campsite the next morning I pitched a bitch because it was a dusty, crowded place still on the fringes of the desert.  My buddy took my head off that morning, too.  Man, was I a jerk.  You drive all night by yourself AND find a campsite by yourself that meets my specifications  Man, what selfish prick I was.

"Whenever you classify something as 'good' or 'bad' you stop looking at it with an open mind."

Toltecs.

A God or The God?

One of my favorite movies is "Groundhog Day" starring Bill Murray.  Oddly enough given the cast of comedic actors the message is very spiritual.  The premise is that Murray's character is a self-absorbed prick who is in Puxatawny to report on Groundhog Day and he gets stuck in a time loop where every day starts out with him reliving Groundhog Day.  Nothing he does seems to change this so he starts to engage in self-absorbed activities: drug use, crime, manipulative sex and is dismayed to find out that each day gets more and more frustrating and banal.  He starts committing suicide to no lasting effect - he wakes up again on Groundhog Day.  He finally confesses to a coworker that he might be God.  She's skeptical.  He says: "I didn't say I was the God - maybe I'm just a God."  He doesn't think he's omnipotent just that he's been around for a long, long time.

Don't we all feel that way from time to time?  That we're God?  I do.  In fact, I feel that way almost all of the time.  I think any wisdom I may have accumulated isn't because I'm wise but rather that I've done stupid things so many times, over and over again, that I finally figure out that I shouldn't do these stupid things.  Does that sound like wisdom?  Or does it sound like the reaction a chipmunk would have if you shocked it every time it touched its food dish?  You wouldn't call the chipmunk wise - you'd say it got tired of getting shocked   Maybe I'm not even a God.  Maybe I'm a chipmunk.

So the character begins to behave generously.  He takes thousands of Groundhog Days to learn how to play the  piano and he helps a homeless guy and he buys tons of insurance from an annoying agent.  Things turn out well.  Eventually, he wakes up and it's Groundhog Day plus one and he's escaped the loop and re-entered linear time and all is well, all is well, all is well.

I'm not sure at the moment whether the point is to encourage all of us to good behavior or to convince everyone that I'm a God.

This and That

I pinged my A.A. daughter a few days ago just to check in.  A while back I told her that she was a terrible Millennial because she never texted me.  "Eh," she quipped.  "I just wait for you to text me."  THIS is why I love this girl.  Anyway, the text landed at the right time because she had gotten an update on her real father - homeless, with no real desire to change - that she found upsetting.  Smart woman that she is she did the right things and worked through it.  I think my text helped but the work is hers to do or not to do.  I reflect and share my belief that your mother and father are your mother and father - good behavior or bad behavior, close relationship or not, intimate connection or distant - and it's not possible to be non-reactive in a manner that's healthy emotionally.  They're your parents.  I know when my mom died my grief was pretty muted even though I was a mama's boy - I was on good terms with her and I didn't have anything left unsaid or any behavior I needed to have corrected.  My alcoholic, emotionally distant, impatient and volatile father, however, passed and I suffered when it happened.  Part of me wondered if I couldn't have applied the tools I learned in my recovery life to have been more understanding.  Who knows?  The point is that we're connected with our birth parents and that's that, nothin' you can do about it.

There's a boy at the meeting who is about the right age to be my son. He is the nicest, kindest man you could ever hope to meet.  He takes everything to heart, makes everything his fault, and feels it deeply, deeply, deeply.  I try to tell him every time I see him what a special person I think he is.  I think he needs this feedback.  He stands there and looks at me like I've tased him.  Such an easy kindness on my part!  Such an easy gift to give and a heartfelt one at that!

I got a text before the meeting yesterday from the guy I know who expresses a little too much interest and lavishes a little too much attention on the younger women in The Program.  His actual behavior has been okay but I've never approved of it.  I don't think that kind of attention to women is helpful in the long run - at the very least it keeps them from interacting with . .  . you know . . . other women - and I can't imagine that there is a subtext that stresses out his relationship with his wife, despite his insistence that he loves her deeply and is deeply committed to her.  SuperK is completely understanding when I share something about my A.A. daughter but she also finds it irritating from time to time.  Completely understandable.  It makes me peer at my behavior very closely.  Sometimes it's not the behavior but the fact that it is attention I've giving to someone else and not to her.  Yesterday we picked up a floor mat at the car dealer, had lunch, and did a little outlet mall shopping.  It was fun and it was with my wife.  It didn't have to be a huge extravaganza - it just needed to be something between the two of us.