Tree Man Redux

Nothing about Tree Man, then back to back posts.


One of the things that I have learned to do in my recovery is to try to take an interest in people I know. This is remarkably hard. I am in my essence concerned only with myself. Sometimes I feign interest in the affairs of others but not too often. I can generate some tepid interest when I think that someone else can do something to make my life easier or can remove some obstacle causing me pain. Otherwise, I can't manufacture much enthusiasm. Other people aren't me which is a flaw that is very difficult to overcome.

I've always liked the phrase "Walk the walk." I also like the concept of "Fake it 'till you make it." I've learned that if I put my intentions into action then my thinking starts to change. It's not clear to me when this happened. It's very subtle. It's like what occurred when I realized that I had overcome all of my huge objections to the idea of a god. I pretended like I believed and woke up one day, surprised that the concept had taken hold.



So Tree Man and I were chatting about life after a meeting. I'm older than he is -- a lot older, he would say, quite accurately and most irritatingly -- and have been sober longer so I was asking a lot of questions and I was genuinely interested in the responses. It's still weird for me to think that's the case. After a bit Tree Man asked:"So how's the swimming going?" Some of you may recall that I learned how to swim a while back and it was not pleasant going at the start. It was quite humbling, in fact.



I thought: "Aha! A question!" It was a beautiful thing. I believe that I should be able to walk into any A.A. meeting that I attend even sporadically and know a little something about most people there. It shows I'm listening to someone else instead of thinking about myself which is my favorite past time. I care about some people more than others -- a natural thing in this dude's world -- but I make the effort. And -- Voila! -- I find myself caring.


Then Willie called me yesterday and said: "It was weird, man. We have this dead tree in our front yard and I read your post and looked up and there he was in my front yard. A tree man! Really weird, man." Not The Tree Man, but a tree man of some kind or other.


As if I could give a shit . . .