Sunday, July 10, 2016

Soldier On

Soldier:  (V) To continue.

My sponsor talks about soldiering on, moving through a thing, taking the next step to the best of my ability.  We laugh about an old commercial for Fram Oil Filters where a crusty, grizzled grease monkey is trying to sell the concept of a more expensive oil filter.

"You can pay me now," he says.  Pause for dramatic emphasis.  "Or you can pay me later."

Sometimes, of course, it's hard to tell what that means.  I know that I need to take action to get through some unpleasantness or the other but I also know that I can't always banish the unpleasantness in a way that seems timely or efficient.  Step forward - see what happens.  Do I find myself a little further up the slope or do I slip on some gravel and slide right back to where I started or, worse yet, fall off the trail and end up in some sticker bushes?  I guess the idea is to kick the can down the road to the best of my ability.  I guess the idea is that I have no idea what the hell is going on most of the time.

As a mortal enemy of unpleasantness - think mongoose versus cobra - my goal is to get the discomfort away from me ASAP.  Alas, I've learned that this is something that is often out of my control.  All I can do is manage the effort, the work, and see what happens.  I don't even know what's supposed to happen, either.  I think I do, some of the time, but I suspect that I'm fooling myself.  I labor under the illusion that my god wants me to avoid pain and collect pleasure.  My god doesn't even laugh when I say this.  He doesn't even look up from the book he's reading, something trashy with a lot of cuss words.  It just never occurs to me that the pain I occasionally go through is what I'm supposed to be going through.  I was meant to be in those sticker bushes.

Full Deck: A word or phrase used to euphemistically refer to another person's being crazy or deranged.  

As you can see, I'm not working with a full deck.


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