There's a man that attended the Keep It Complicated group regularly before the Great Schism drew him to the hardliner meeting. He has a horrific back story - convicted of murder committed during a crime followed by a 25 year stint in prison, where he got sober. He was paroled from prison and has completed this parole so he's a free man for the first time in 30 years. He has started attending Keep It Complicated again and I'm really struck by the difference in his personality - to my way of thinking, anyway - since I last saw him regularly. He was so committed to Alcoholics Anonymous - so fierce in his desire to help others recover, especially the low bottom drunks - that he came across as somewhat preachy and fervent and inflexible about how The Program should be worked. He talked at every meeting and he talked for a long time when he talked. I found him somewhat annoying. I like the words pious and sanctimonious. They imply that one's shit doesn't stink. They imply that if you're not doing it the way I say it should be done that you're doing wrong.
Today he has taken the whole thing down a notch. Down a notch can be good. I tend to overdo most things so I've developed a thing for dialing back the intensity; so much so that it's automatic and unconscious a lot of the time. When I realized that my intensity was fucking with my enjoyment of life I began to see that maybe a little less was okay, that it still allowed me to accomplish my goals without making them so odious that they became thankless chores.
Slower can be good.
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