Hooray For Me!

As St. Frank says: "It is better to understand than to be understood," a statement I definitely do not understand.  The momentum of those of us who are working on our spiritual self is towards this understanding.  It comes more easily with family members that we love and to our Fellowship paisanos than it does to those people who irritate us, and it becomes even more of a slog when we're dealing with people who really are behaving badly.

When we were gone a relative of mine had a stroke.  He's recovering - slowly - in a rehab facility very close to where I live.  He's a fine man, he really is - this is not in dispute.  The rub for me is that he's also a vociferous hyper-partisan political true-believer  - one of those folks who has consumed the Kool-Aid, so to speak, who spends large amounts of time in very opinionated, slanted echo-chambers, places that reinforce over and over, and loudly, those beliefs that one already holds dearly, facts be damned.  This is one thing.  The other thing is that he feels comfortable repeating these things to me, at an elevated volume, frequently, despite the fact that I've kind of . . . you know . . . told him to shut the fuck up about it.

The morning that I attended the meeting where the conversation was about helping my still-suffering fellow alcoholic - and by extension everyone else in the world that I may be able to help - I had already made plans to visit this guy.  I did just that.  It was just fine.  I didn't stay long but I visited.  We had a nice talk and I could see that he really appreciated the visit.  I don't like going into rehab facilities and I get to go back out - this dude is stuck there.  I know from experience that it's boring and frustrating to be someplace, sick and injured, and lose almost all control of your environment.

Hooray for me!  What a wonderful guy I am!

Actually, not so much.  But I did do a nice thing.  Can't say I enjoyed the visit that much but I know I did a nice thing.

On a related side note I felt a little guilty that I didn't stay longer.  I'm probably the only person who has visited him outside of his family but I like to feel guilty.  That's the alcoholic mind - we do more than almost anyone else but still manage to feel like shit about it.