Fun Facts About How Useless Humans Are

The hierarchy of humans in the natural world . . . .  

We're slow and we're weak.

We have incredibly thin skin that can be easily damaged.

We cannot tolerate cold temperatures for long and prolonged high temperatures are quickly fatal.

We can't climb, fly, swim, or jump.

The average human being is far slower than a hippopotamus, rhinoceros, or elephant.  Bears you can just forget about and any big cat is going to blow by you like a missile.  If something is chasing you save your breath because it's going to catch you.  You're slower than a warthog for chrissake and I don't even know what a warthog is.

We have big brains.  Massive, humongous brains and we're social animals that have learned how to cooperate.  That's our advantage.

Given all of this is it any wonder that we're fearful, anxious, neurotic creatures?

Source: Africa Geographic

Source: Africa Geographic

Zorba, A.A., and the Toltecs

There's a passage in the novel Zorba the Greek where the main character runs into an old man planting a tree and asks what he's doing.  

"You can see what I'm doing.  I'm planting a tree."

"Why are you planting that tree?  You're never going to see it bear fruit."

"I live my life as if I'm never going to die," the old man says.  

As Zorba walks away, a faint smile on his lips, he thinks: "How strange.  I live as if I'm going to die tomorrow.'

There's an old adage that I try to follow: Plan as if I'm going to live forever and live as if I'm going to die tomorrow.    Keeps me in the moment.  Am I going to rage against the machine if today is my last day?  Am I going to waste my last moments angry at someone who didn't use their turn signal?

Here are the Toltecs: "We always have a choice.  I can change things with just one choice.  If I like the way something is going, I can keep doing it.  If I don't like it I can change it."

Unbelievable!  Who would have thought this?  It's too stupid easy to be true!

Keep doing what you're doing and you'll keep getting what you're getting.  Works both ways, doesn't it?

To continue: "Living a life of awareness takes work.  The discipline required to become a master requires constant practice.  And it gets easier to keep a discipline with time."

Gimme The Ball

I have been in touch with Detox Girl a few times since she was released from the hospital and by "been in touch" I mean "I'm reaching out to her."  When SuperK and I were in the ER with her my wife told me that she felt like our prospect was oddly not as upset or horrified as she should be, that it felt like a case of yadda yadda yadda been there, done that.  This I needed to hear.  I think I was a little bit bedazzled at my contributions to this whole situation.  When Detox Girl was sharing some stories about her family and co-workers initially I found myself on her side completely.  Now I'm beginning to see that she might have burned so many bridges so many times that their reactions are the appropriate ones.  At first I was outraged that her ex was trying to gain sole custody of their children and that her mother was on the ex's side.  Now . . . I dunno.  A twenty-nine year old who needs a shot in the morning to stop the shakes?  Maybe not the best option for taking care of a two year old.

 I try to approach new people with the attitude that I may be providing the last little nudge that gets them into recovery while staying aware to the very real possibility that they may never sober up.  The answer, thankfully, is usually somewhere in between.  I'm in charge of the giving but I'm not in charge of the receiving.  I meditate daily on the concept of Unconditional Love - I can reach out to a new person with the flimsy reed of sobriety but I can't grasp it for them.  I try to stay aware of the success percentages in the recovery world.  I want to be of service as often as I can without becoming jaded over all the failures.  I'm giving to the new person and I'm the one who benefits, ultimately, most of the time, but I'm not giving because I expect something in return.  Still weird to verbalize this.

My sober friend who has been doing the heavy lifting in this drama has a very young son who plays T-Ball.  She says that when the ball is in play all of the boys try to get to it and they become very frustrated if someone else beats them to the punch.  She said once her son threw his mitt at the boy who got there first.  I'm still laughing about this.  Sounds like a bunch of alcoholics, doesn't it?  No concept of team work.  "He's on your team!"  "Fuck that - I want the ball!

Slogging Seaweed

The mild weather I get to enjoy in SoCal allows me to open a window in my meditation room most days.  It's early when I first sit down so it's quiet outside.  Then some particular kind of bird begins to stir and makes this repetitive chirping noise.  Chirp, chirp, chirp.  The cadence and rhythm changes from time to time, getting faster and more strident, slowing down.  Could be the alarm on an old clock radio.  Next, another different kind of bird starts up with kind of a whirring noise.  Brings to mind a big, flying cricket creature.  So those two guys are welcoming me to the day.  It's quite dark at the onset and I really enjoy seeing how the light slowly changes.  It's pitch black - depending on how big the moon is in its waning and waxing cycles - and then the day starts to brighten up.  Slowly, very slowly.  I can perceive a change in the light.  Initially it's more of a suggestion of brightening.  It's a little brighter . .  .  . kinda . . . sort of.  There are road noises coming from outside the community or there are not.  This changes based on the wind direction, I think.  We get fog often overnight and this can deaden the noise completely.  Some days I hear every truck and car hissing by my window and some days there's nothing.

How weird is the concept of giving?  I still don't get it intellectually.  It seems like a win-lose situation.  I give.  You get.  I haven't completely shaken off my zero sum mentality.  There's six pieces of pie and if I grab three of them .  . .  well . . . tough shit for you.  Snooze ya lose.

SuperK and I spent a couple of hours yesterday in a room off the local ER sitting with Detox Girl.  She was through the worst of the detox but she was still shaky.  My sober daughter was there most of the previous day as Detox Girl was in the worst of it.  Vomiting, shaking, that kind of shit.  A room off an ER isn't that great a room.  The chairs suck.  The ambiance leaves a lot to be desired.  The traffic in the hallway consists of sick and injured people going to and fro.  There is not a lovely aromatic smell wafting about.  I'd rather be somewhere else if I'm talking about my own personal comfort which is the only comfort I care much about.  At least I wasn't rubbing the back of someone upchucking.   But I understood in my bones that I was putting money in my serenity bank.  I was not thinking about myself, I was not pondering the return on investment.  My sober daughter has two small children at home and I told her that I knew she wasn't jotting down in a ledger every nice thing she does for her kids so that sometimes in the future she can whip it out and say: "Hey, you were acting like a brat so I made you pancakes even though I was tired so you owe me."  I know love doesn't work like that.  If it's not freely given . . . well . . . it's not really love, is it?

And on the other hand I have to be prepared for the very real possibility that I breathed in hospital smells trying to be helpful to someone who very well may be drinking the day she gets out of the hospital.  Alcoholism works like that.  I still cannot believe that I sobered up lo these many years ago.  It's a slog.  Most of us are poor sloggers.

On the Firing Line

I am continually amazed at the ins and outs of how A.A. works.  It really is miraculous.  We're a stumbling, confused collection of non-professional bozos of all stripes and colors coming together in a stumbling, confused way to do miraculous things.  There are plenty of heartbreaks and failures along the way but after a while they pale in comparison with the successes.  We are trying to haul drowning people into the lifeboat.  We helplessly watch some sink beneath the waves but - man! - the joy of pounding someone on the back, spitting out seawater and jellyfish, and making it to shore with us.  The Book uses words along the lines of this is "something that is not to be missed."  

Seizure Girl got in touch with her A.A. sister and me yesterday - after some gentle prodding - to inform us that she was going to drop off her kids, take a shower, and head to the hospital, and she actually followed through, no small victory.  My young friend - who has two small children and a job - took a chunk of her afternoon to sit in the emergency room with the desperate new woman as they tried to get her into a room while assessing her condition.  It speaks to how dicey the situation was that they admitted her to the hospital.  I don't believe she has health insurance so the fact that the hospital is treating her would seem to suggest that they were pretty worried.

That's where things stand.  I texted my buddy this morning to tell her how totally impressed I was with her effort.  Have you been to an ER recently?  A more frustrating, slow-motion, miserable place is hard to find.  I was telling this tale to SuperK last night and she said: "You saved her life."  I demurred.  It's what we do.  C'mon, I thought, that's a little dramatic.  I do think we're going to need to see how things play out - this could still go sideways on us - but then my wife shared an incident when she was still pondering sobriety and it was that incident we all have where someone does or says exactly the right thing at exactly the right time that finally helps us make the choice to recover.  Her words made me pause and take stock of what was happening.  At the very least I know with great certainty that my helpful A.A. daughter will never, ever forget being part of this.  It will become one of those moments that cement in our minds the certainty that we can never, ever successfully drink again and that this is what our future looks like if we keep drinking.

In the Doctor's Opinion there's this: " . . . let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing spouses, the little children, let the solving of these problems become part of their daily work, and . . . the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement."  I'm reminded of waiting for clearance to attend a meeting in a prison and watching mothers and little children being searched for weapons and contraband before being allowed to go see their dad.  Not as good a memory as a picnic on a spring day or visiting an amusement park.  Not the kind of memory I'd be proud to pass along.

Honor ALL of the Feelings

I am aware each and every day of the blessing of my sobriety.  I am aware that I am living a life of great privilege and that it's a life I did not expect and one that I would not have pursued.  The gift of sobriety and the gifts I accrue following a spiritual life have come as a surprise.  I never thought, never figured out, that material possessions and deep, meaningful relationships come as a result of right living.  I was under the impression that if I already had a good job and lots of stuff and friends and a good partner then I would be happy.  I didn't grasp the truth that I needed to become the best version of my own self to be able to appreciate having these things and - even more incredibly - that if I didn't accumulate them to the level I wanted I'd be okay with that, too.

I speak regularly with my brother Willie.  We have an easy rapport.  I know that if I'm hurting he's got my back and vice versa.  This understanding means that each of us can take liberties with the relationship.  To wit: on our last call he shared some frustration he was having with his boss . . .  who he does not like.  This is real, this kind of anger and frustration and fear, and we have to honor this in our fellows.  It's natural to feel these kinds of feelings sometimes and our job as spiritual people is to empathize and support our friends (and even our not-so-friends) when they're going through them.  It's unkind to imply they shouldn't be having these feelings or that if they were more grateful for all their blessings then they'd be able to overcome the fear or resentment.  For example, I have been upset at the machinations I've had to go through and the hoops through which I've had to jump and the money that's coming out of my pocket to fix the damage done to my brand new car by someone who wasn't considerate enough to leave a note, someone I would like to poison with plutonium or incapacitate by slipping ground up glass into their oatmeal.  A quick death is not going to be good enough for me.  I intuitively understand that these little troubles won't amount to a hill of beans in the long run but it would be unkind for someone to tell me to shake it off, to get over it, to count my blessings instead of tallying up my defeats, to remember that at least I have a new car.  I will come to that eventually but right now I'm imagining hot pokers being inserted into . . . well . . . I'll leave everything to your imagination.

Here's the fun: while I listened to Willie and I empathized and I didn't discount or brush off his frustration I have the kind of relationship where, after a minute, I could say to him - I could interrupt him while he was talking, in fact - and remark: "Let me get this straight - you make a lot of money working two days a week and you're bitching about your boss?"

His response was perfect: "Fuck you.  Fuck you!  Why do I pick up the phone when you call?"  We were both roaring with laughter.  On the surface my comment was brutal but my timing was so exquisite I knew I'd get away with it.  Be supportive and be honest and know when to do which.

An update: my A.A. daughter offered to accompany the new girl to the hospital yesterday to get some help detoxing.  It was arranged.  It did not happen.  Radio silence from the new girl.  We are frustrating, heart-breaking people.

Self-Knowledge and Willpower Will Avail You Nothing

More tidbits from the Plain Language Big Book.  It's funny how often I can recognize the content of the original passage in this updated version but there are some sentences that don't ring a bell.

"Self knowledge would fix his problem.  He was absolutely convinced he had to stop drinking.  He had no excuse for drinking.  He showed real judgment and determination in other areas of his life, yet he was totally powerless to stay sober."

Self-knowledge and willpower; willpower and self-knowledge.  The utter futility of these two powerful forces to arrest an active alcoholic is driven home over and over again.

"I saw that willpower and self-knowledge would not help me.  So we'll say it once more: At certain times, alcoholics have no mental defense against the first drink."

In case you didn't believe me when I said what I said before.

"Instead we found that - no matter how hard we tried - relying only on ourselves and our willpower always completely failed.  We are powerless to control our drinking.  Which means that in order to change our drinking habits, we cannot just rely on ourselves."

In case you didn't believe me when I repeated what I said that I said before.

"To be doomed to die an alcoholic death or to find a way to live a spiritual life is not an easy choice to make."

I almost laughed the first time I read this line and then I thought: "Wait . . . they're serious here.  They're not joking."  It reminds me of the joke about a long-timer telling a newcomer he would have to choose between a spiritual solution or suffering a long and miserable life before succumbing, bereft and alone, only to hear the newcomer reply: "Can I get back to you on that?"  It's almost literally what happens a lot of the time.

  "We know that choosing between living your  entire life as an alcoholic or becoming a spiritual person can be difficult."