Choice is a Demon

Some more interesting thoughts about thoughts . . . 

People are terrible at predicting outcomes.  The terrible things we imagine happening (think: dentist's office + pain) don't end up being that bad and the enjoyment we expect to get out of fun things (think: football game homecoming - hard benches - shitty hotdogs that cost $10) tend to be more "Meh" than "Wow."  Relax, okay?  It's all going to work out.  Just quit pursuing the pleasure and fleeing the pain.  You're probably getting it wrong. 

If people who are trying to decide whether to see a new movie are given the choice of seeing a short trailer of the film or reading several online reviews written by average viewers most people choose the clip option.  In reality it's much more likely that a bunch of reviews written by non-professionals we don't know is going to predict whether or not we enjoy the show.  We tend to way, way overestimate our abilities.  We are not all that.  We are all pretty average.  Most people view the world in a similar way.  If you like the clip but the average Joe reviews are terrible then you're probably not going to like the movie, either.  Who do you think you are: Gene Siskel?  The average driver rates himself as excellent and everyone else as below average.  Think about it.  The numbers don't work.

Choice is a demon.  Too much choice is a mean demon.

Uncertainty seems like a demon but it's actually not a demon.

Aphorisms and Proverbs and Other Pity Sayings

Self-Righteous:  Having or characterized by a certainty, especially an unfounded one, that one is totally correct or morally superior; convinced of one's own righteousness, especially in contrast with the actions and beliefs of others; smugly moralistic and intolerant of the actions and opinions of others.

Man, these definitions are like eating Doritoes! - each successive one is better than the one preceding.  I'm especially fond of "smugly moralistic."  Whoo, boy.  "Convinced of one's own righteousness."  Oh, dude.  St. Anthony, on the other hand, reminds us that we should seek  "to understand rather than be understood."

"Often we make the assumption that our partners know what we think and that we don't have to say what we want.  We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do.  And when we believe something, we assume we are right about it to the point that we will destroy relationships in order to defend our position."

Man, c'mon, read my mind!  Fuck's the matter with you, anyway?  SuperK says this to me all the time: "Use your words, Seaweed, use your words."  People should just know what I want and then fulfill my every wish. 

"If others change, it's because they want to change, not because you can change them.  Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them.  If we try to change them, this means we don't really like them."

Man, nobody's listening to me!  They don't care what my thoughts are about how they can improve their morals and opinions.  Fuck's the matter with me, anyway?

"If you don't understand, ask.  Have the courage to ask questions until you are clear as you can be, and even then do not assume you know all there is to know about a given situation.  Also, find your voice to ask for what you want.  Everybody has the right to tell you no or yes, but you always have the right to ask.  Likewise, everybody has the right to ask you, and you have the right to say yes or no."

Man, somewhere in a distant galaxy long, long ago I heard the proverb "If you're unsure . .  the best answer is always No because it can more easily be changed to Yes than the other way around."  Sometimes people in A.A. will remind me that you shouldn't ever turn down an A.A. request, that you should never say no when someone asks you to be of service.  Fucking kidding me?  I say no all the time and if the petitioner presses his case I'll simply say that I don't want to do it.  Sometimes, I'll ask what the pay is and I remind folks that are looking for a sponsor that I'm very, very expensive, like a Wall Street lawyer.  I get results but it's gonna cost ya.

My Man Malik

I was walking back to my car after a meeting one morning when I stopped a grandma and a young boy who were walking to school.  I always like to see this.  Grandma and grandson.  In Spain work starts later than in the U.S. so kids often walk with their parents or a parent on the way to school a spectacle that I very much enjoyed seeing.  The presence of a matriarch or father-figure with a child heading to school in the cool morning air.  I don't go anywhere anymore where there's cold morning air.  Fuck that.  Cool morning air I can do but you can get yourself to school any way you can when it's cold.

I started a conversation with the boy.  He appeared to be ten or eleven years old.  I don't remember exactly what off-kilter thing I opened up with.  Kids generally like me.  I think my off-kilter-ness is sort of arresting.  Like: "what is this adult doing, anyhow?"  They're so eager to please and they're so willing to believe an adult even when the dialogue is so nonsensical that much of the time they stand and look at me, transfixed, flummoxed.  They moved on.  Summer arrived so I didn't get to see them regularly.  School began again and I ran into them again and we talked briefly, again.  I gave him a hug.  He hugged back.  Not long after that, as I was ambling along, I saw the two of them coming my way.  The boy - Malik - separated from grandma and came right in for a hug before the conversation began.  I always try to be super (Sorry, California word) positive with kids, super-energetic and complimentary.  I always felt like I was messing up, falling short, when I was growing up (not because I was being told this but because it was lodged in my mind) so I just can't make anyone feel bad about anything.  Same same as in A.A.

This is, I believe, a mandate I have been given by the Great Spirit.  Recharge people, recharge the world, let peace and positivity and calmness ooze from my Very Being.

I'm Unable to Change the Past

"We have the tendency to make assumptions about everything.  The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they're the truth.  We could swear they are real and this swearing is exacerbated by the fact that sometimes they are real.  We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking - we take it personally - then we blame them.  We only see what we want to see, and hear what we want to hear.  We don't perceive things the way they are.  We have the habit of dreaming with no basis in reality.  We literally dream things up in our imagination."

In other words: No one is thinking about me.

"It is comforting to know that every day we are in contact with people who put such confidence in us that we strive harder to do our best.  When one person can be challenged, another may need to be told how to rise above emotions and imagined shortcomings.  We all need approval and attention, and when someone cares, it makes an important difference."

I often remind myself that the only good message is one that builds up.  I realize all of us need to get a swift kick in the ass some of the time - we're that stubborn in our beliefs and behavior - but I devote most of my time to patting the back instead of kicking the ass.  We are so incredibly hard on ourselves that I don't have the heart to yell at anyone.  

"We might be able to go back and do things differently if we had new knowledge, new understanding.  Otherwise, we would do the same things.  We work with what we have, with what we know.  To anguish over what we did in the past is foolish.  Most of our regrets, of course, are either imagined or history."

I did the best I could with the tools I had at the time.  And I know this to be fact: I am completely unable to change the past.

Twenty Bucks

As the current thematic drift has been sorta along the lines of "quit bullshitting yourself" and also "quit repeating yourself" I'm going to repeat one of my favorite themes: how good we are at bullshitting ourselves.

This may be an old example but it's so damn good I'm going with it again:
If I offered you a twenty dollar coupon that you could apply to a thirty dollar grocery bill with the only stipulation that you had to walk an extra fifteen minutes past your regular grocery store to a second store to earn the discount, what would you say?  No brainer, right?

Now let's change the offer: would you make the same fifteen minute walk to earn the same twenty dollar coupon if you were purchasing a fifty thousand dollar car?  No fucking way, right?  I'm spending fifty grand so twenty bucks is chicken feed, right?

This is illogical.  This makes no sense.  Zero sense.  The coupon is a reward for walking fifteen minutes out of your way but in one case you jump at the offer and in the next you laugh it off, even though it's the exact same thing.  This is why people pay money for a navigation system they'll never us or for a bigger engine that provides no extra performance.  They compare instead of looking at the math.

I don't trust my thinking.  And I think a lot.  The message to myself is that most of it's bullshit.

Our minds do this stuff all the time.  There's an evolutionary reason behind it, no doubt, but it's not helpful in all cases.  This is why those of us who have been around for a while know how important it is to talk to other people.  We're nuts, basically.  We're not really nuts anymore and we're not nuts all the time but we're still nuts.  I cannot tell you how many times I've been in the middle of a story or an anecdote or a justification when I see a skeptical look grow on the face of the person I'm talking to.  Just because I've manipulated the facts so that they make sense to me doesn't mean that they make sense in an absolute sense.

Self-Restraint

Self-Restraint:  Control over your own actions or feelings that keeps you from doing things that you want to do but should not do.  If you show self-restraint you do not do something even though you would like to do it, because you think it would be better not to.

The benefits of a close reading of our literature continue to accrue.  Highlights and underlining also 

help because they show me how repetitive our Founders were when they wrote the books.  They knew we wern't listening most of the time so they had to say the same things over and over and over.  Most of the time they didn't even bother to use different words.  They used the same words to say the same things, often in the same paragraph, sometimes in the same sentence.

I may have made that last point up.

From Step Ten in the 12&12: "In all these situations we need self-restraint . . .  Our first objective will be the development of self-restraint.  Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen.  For we can neither think nor act to good purpose untile the habit of self-restraint has become automatic.  Disagreeable or unexpected problems are not the only ones that call for self-control."

All of these lines were from the same paragraph in Step Ten.

I definitely made part of that up.  The last sentence was the first sentence in the second paragraph and not in the same paragraph but that's so close I hoped I could get away with such a minor lie, one given with such noble intent.  A good lie, right, not an evil, nasty lie.  But the point is that apparently self-restraint is one of our goals.  Because it is repeated five times in a manner of seconds.

OK, I made that up, too.  It's not repeated in a manner of seconds - more like minutes - but seconds sounds so much more impressive.

Toltecs and Bill W and Dr. Bob, Oh, My

"Sometimes wisdom is knowing what to overlook.  Because we never know when we are going to be in another person's shoes.  If it should happen, we want to be forgiven - for a variety of reasons.  Overlooking shortcomings is not just wisdom - it's kindness as well.  Who has not hoped the world was looking the other way when he or she fell short of being admirable?"

  

The Toltecs are killing me here.  How important is the spiritual lesson that "to err is human, to forgive divine?"  To realize that my annoyance at someone else is due to the fact that I quickly jump to the conclusion that their actions harbor ill intent, bad motives, a desire to do me personal harm, instead of deciding that maybe they just made a fucking mistake?  Priceless.  Priceless in the peace of mind department.

"Me, me, me, always me!  Nothing other people do is because of you.  It is because of themselves.  All people live in their own dream, in their own mind, so don't take it personally.  That person tried to send poison to you and if you take it personally, then you take that poison and it becomes yours.   When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts.  You make something big out of something so little, because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong."

The two sure steps to serenity are 1) Don't sweat the small stuff and 2) It's all small stuff.  Or an elephant is really a mouse built to an alcoholic's specifications.  Do you really think that the guy in front of you who is driving too slowly or too quickly or with their left hand turn signal blinking continuously or making a turn without using a turn signal is doing something to you?

Or . . . do you want to be right?  Or do you want to be happy?  (Ed. Note: I always thought this was a trick question, the answer being, natch, both!  I'm happy because I'm right!)

"It is not important to me what you think about me, and I don't take what you think personally.  It does not affect me because I know what I am.  I don't have the need to be accepted.  I don't have the need to have someone tell me what I am.  It doesn't matter to me."

While the axiom of "I don't give a shit" can get out of control from time to time not giving a shit can really save me some angst.

"You are the director, you are the producer, you are the main actor.  Everyone else is a secondary actor.  It is your movie.  It is no one's truth but yours.  Then if you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself.  I am the excuse for you to get mad.  And you got mad because you are afraid, because you are dealing with fear.  If you are not afraid, there is no way you will get mad at me.  If you live without fear, if you love, there is no place for any of those emotions.  Because you like the way you are.  Because you are content with you.  Because you are happy with your life.  You are happy with the movie that you are producing, happy with your agreements with life."

Here's Alcoholics Anonymous: "Every person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery, and the rest of the players in his own way.  If only people did what he wished, the show would be great.  Everyone, including himself, would be pleased.  The show would be great.  In trying to make these arrangements our actor may be quite virteous.  On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, and selfish and dishonest." 

This idea that I need to figure out what everyone else should be doing is simultaneously preposterous and profound.  I'm the actor.  I'm not even the actor, I'm an actor.

The Committee, Toltec Style

"The mind can also talk and listen to itself.  Part of the mind is speaking, and the other part is listening.  It is a big problem when a thousand parts of your mind are all speaking at the same time."

I mean, c'mon, isn't this simply a Toltec interpretation of the infamous Committee?  As a reminder the Toltecs came to power in central Mexico beginning in the ninth century.  For those of us who are math-challenged that's eleven centuries ago.  Ten centuries is a long time but eleven is one more now, isn't it.  One thousand one hundred years ago a pre-Mayan culture was warming up to the idea that it's possible to harbor hundreds and hundreds of screaming, gibbering maniacs inside one head, all of them vying for your attention.  I'm going to assume there were alcoholics in that culture.

Another of my scarcely funny jokes: My committee has been reduced down to about ninety-seven members.  That doesn't sound too good - almost hundred screaming, gibbering maniacs vying for my attention but I'll tell you this: after listening to a thousand screaming, gibbering maniacs for the thirty years it took me to get sober this qualifies for near silence on the shores of high mountain lake as the sun is beginning to rise.  I'll take it any day.

Doing the Best We Can

From Step Nine, at various points: "It does not lighten our burden when we recklessly make the crosses of others heavier."  And then, earlier: "We must be sure to remember that we cannot buy our own peace of mind at the expense of others."  And down the road a bit: "The only exceptions (to making amends) we will make will be cases where our disclosure would cause actual harm."

Hey, alcoholics, we don't pay attention!  So our Founders have to repeat themselves over and over!  And they don't even bother to change up the words that much because they know we won't remember what we didn't pay attention to, anyhow!

The Cherokee Lady: "To live peacefully with other people, we need insight and careful judgment.  So much is hidden from ordinary view that it takes time to know something well enough  to say anything at all."

Hey, this alcoholic can't keep his mouth shut!  The advice I dispense often but not often enough that I remember to apply it to my own life regularly is that everyone is doing the best they can with the tools they have at their disposal.  When I tell this to myself and actually believe it then I have a lot of empathy for the behavior of other people.  We're all doing the best we can.  I don't believe there are too many really crappy people out there.  I believe there are a lot of decent people who are making a shit-ton of mistakes.  How about we give each other a big, monstrous break?

Or in Cherokee speak: "Sometimes wisdom is knowing what to overlook.  Because we never know when we are going to be in another person's shoes.  If it should happen we want to be forgiven - for a variety of reasons.  Overlooking shortcomings is not just wisdom - it's kindness as well.  Who has not hoped the world was looking the other way when  he or she fell short of being admirable?"

Maybe the asshole in front of you driving too slowly or driving too quickly or not using their turn signals or speeding up right when the light turns yellow so they make it through but you don't is making a mistake or is distracted by some serious matter affecting their lives.  How about that?

No Regrets

"The important thing is not to regret what has gone before but to take from it the lesson, the experience that was in it for us.  (Ed. Note: I like the use of the lesson rather than a lesson.  Implies that there is something specific to be learned.)  Life is a two way street, not always sunshine and flowers but a few clouds, a few tears, go with it.  It is a complex mixture of many things we are supposed to glean from it.  We cannot park by what went wrong, nor can we longer forever by something we might have done right.  It is a progressive, moving time filled with new experiences, memories both good and not so good, and many promising hours."

I am very curiously curious about this difference between an apology - a statement of regret for a harm done - and an amend - a course of action taken to correct a harm done.  Mistakes are part of life.  To err is human etc etc etc.  The key, the trick, is to stop doing whatever it was that caused offense.  Saying I'm sorry is a LOT easier than changing my behavior.

Regret:  A feeling of sadness about a mistake you have made and a wish that it could have been different or better; pain caused by deep disappointment, fruitless longing, or unavailing remorse.

I was talking to a friend before the meeting yesterday and making a joke that I was vaguely aware was close to crossing that line between edgy humor and inappropriate behavior, even offensive-to-some behavior.  And I think what made it dangerous was that I involved a third person.  This dude knows I love him and care about him and mean no harm but didn't like that the joke went outside the small circle of two.  I think I could talk after this fashion between the two of us without offending anyone.  When the third guy walked away he called me out on it in a very kind fashion, but I could see that it wasn't easy for him to tell me this stuff.  Because I knew I was awfully close to that line I acknowledged that my behavior could be misinterpreted I apologized several times, even thanking him for being secure enough in our friendship that he could bring this up, and I could see the relief on his face when I added that last bit.

After the meeting I apologized one more time and even chased down the third guy to make sure he took no offense.  OK.  Good.  Fair enough.  I'm done apologizing.  The Books have a number of passages that remind us that we don't grovel before anyone - we apologize sincerely and move on with our lives.  If the offended party doesn't accept that apology that's on the offended party's conscience, not ours, although the really important part is that I now must not behave the way I was behaving in those circumstances.  The apology is important but not as important as the amended behavior.  Apologies are great but they can, from time to time, be insincere.  Good behavior is beyond reproach.  

Falling short is fine - learning from it is not.

Get Away From Me

"We want the solitary hours as long as it has a spirit and aliveness.  It is in the quiet times that we build our strengths and know we have something to rely on.  Solitude is not withdrawal into a place where no one and no sound can penetrate.  It is a sweet moment of peace with or without other people that lets us recenter and reset the rhythm of the mind, body, and spirit."

Isolation:  The near or complete lack of social contact by an individual; the condition of being alone, especially when this makes you unhappy (evidence links social isolation with unhappiness, depression, poor sleep quality, and accelerated cognitive decline.)

Solitude:  The situation of being alone, often by choice; the state of being alone without being lonely.

Today I've been clean and sober for thirty-seven years, more or less, since it was so fuzzy at the end I'm not exactly sure when I quit the drug use.  So let's say it's today.  Today is as good as any day.  Here's the math: I spend about two hours a day on my recovery, including a Quiet Time, social interaction like phone calls and coffees and walk, and the whole meeting process which involves getting there and getting home and the meeting and the meeting before the meeting and the meeting after the meeting.  Let's say fifteen hours a week.  Times fifty-two makes about eight hundred hours a year.  Times thirty-seven years and we're at around 29,600 hours. That's a shit-ton of recovery effort, shit-ass.  Whew.  But know what?  It's nothing given the life I've lived.  And one of the biggest benefits is the end of isolation and the beginning of a true companionship with my fellow man.

Peace!

Bits and Pieces . . .

How about you do the work today?  How about that concept?  How about you quit casting about for something or someone to blame and do the work?  I have an anniversary coming up and I usually make some comment along the lines of "I'm here mostly because I do the work."  I needed the flash of inspiration that came from an awakened knowledge of a Higher Power and I needed The Fellowship to help me make sense of things but, mostly, I needed to take action.

Be impeccable in your words.  Impeccable comes from the Latin root pecatus which means sin and the im means without so impeccable is "without sin."  It's helpful to me to think of a sin as anything which goes against myself.  Everything I say or do that goes against myself is a sin.  When I'm impeccable I take responsibility for my actions but I don't judge or blame myself.

"Over the years we may learn how to make friends and how to keep them - and most of it is down by controlling our tongues.  No matter how close we are to someone, it does not give us the right to say anything we choose.  Time and space mean nothing to friends.  They find each other again and again, to share the things that are important.  Friends forgive us whether we deserve it or not.  They know how easy it is to get off center."

I don't believe that there is a section in The Twelve and Twelve that means more to me than this one, and there's a lot of great sections: "The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear - primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.  Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration."

Step Seven, baby, reminds me that if I got it I'm afraid I'ma gonna lose it and if I don't got it, well, then I'm pissed that I don't got it.  That's all that there is.  There is no time for anything else if my life philosophy boils down to this.

More Promises: "Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and with his fellows.  We would like to be assured that the grace of God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves." 

Peace:  Freedom from disturbance; tranquility.

 Peace!

Coffee For Three, Please

I was finishing up my walk on the beach today - it makes me smile every single time I repeat the phrase "walk on the beach" - and preparing for lunch with a sponsee who is mostly crazy when I decided to get in line at this little coffee kiosk for a jolt of caffeine.  A woman and her adult daughter got in line behind me and asked what I liked best at this kiosk.  We chatted amiably about nothing for a minute and I ordered and pointed at the two women: "And whatever they're having."  They had already told me what they were having so I had come to terms with how much of my cash I was going to be devoting to the well-being of someone else (shudder . . .) with a 100% certainty that it would never be reciprocated.  They demurred and deferred and deflected before letting me pony up for their drinks.

I like doing this.  People respond as if I'm passing out Maseratiis or something.  I like surprising people.  I like doing something unexpected.  I like to believe this will stand out in their day.  The college-aged daughter deferred even more, even after Mom had ordered her drink.  I think people are trying to be nice when they do that but - no shit, here - a lot of the fun on my end is in the giving (shudder shudder) of something, anything.  I do make a big effort to be androgynous as I do this where women are involved so they don't think I'm making a slick move or anything . . . as if I have any idea what a slick move would even look like.

 

This giving bullshit has really gotten under my skin . . . 

The Period of Death

I'm reflecting on how life seems to be a combination of longer steady-state periods where things are going well - or at least pretty well - with the occasional frantic growth period tossed in to spice things up.  The growth periods are usually unwelcome and unannounced.  I know that they're coming at some point but they usually seem sudden, jarring, cacophonous.  I don't enjoy growth periods - AFGO, another fucking growth opportunity, after all - even though I realize that most of my growing comes during the hard times.  I don't normally grow very much when shit's going my way.  I coast.  I wallow.  I doze in the sun.  I ooze.

One of the most significant fragments of my life came about during the great Period of Death when I was separated from both parents and Ken H, my most beloved sponsor.  It didn't help that I was aging and no longer felt like I was ten feet tall and bullet proof.  I have always been overly concerned about my health and this preoccupation was jarred into reality by seeing people close to me die.  Death is pretty final and it's a thing, man.  Dead is dead.  Dead is gone.  I struggled mightily for six or seven months - maybe more - before I was able to right the emotional ship.  I did NOT enjoy the stuggling.  It was uncomfortable and I do NOT like being uncomfortable.  But I did come through that as a much tougher son of a bitch.  I brush stuff off more easily than I used to.  I have a solid temper and I can't remember the last time that someone or something did something that pissed me off for more than a couple of beats.  I think somewhere part of my brain listens to something that would have angered me in the past and shrugs: "Meh, both of my parents are dead.  I'm not upset that you laughed at my pork pie hat."  Life is easier.  Less frantic.  I'm more present.  I needed the pain to funnel me into this goodness.

Homer, Again

The Twelve and Twelve, Step Seven . . . 

"Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering.  Escape via the bottle was always our solution.  Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.  But we may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue.  A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, as opposed to something we must have."

Humility:  A modest or low view of one's own importance;  the feeling or attitude that you have no special importance that makes you better than others; it is based on a fundamentally caring and compassionate toward others.

Whew, whew, and whew.  This was not how anyone would have described me post-recovery.  I was always trying to climb to the top of the heap, often on the backs of others.  Your worth to me was based on your utility to me.  If you provided nothing to me you were nothing to me.  If I perceived that I was better than you, I disregarded you as an irrelevance.  If I perceived that you were better than me, I resented you, venomously, and did what I could to climb higher on the pile than you . . . or at least knock your ass off the pile completely.

I mention frequently that much of my life philosophy, my character, my moral fiber, my sense of right and wrong, was born in the mind of Homer Simpson, and whatever pieces didn't originate there come from George Costanza.  One beloved Simpson's episode centers around Homer running for garbage commissioner.  The reason he wanted the job was to change the system so he didn't have to take the garbage out every week.  His defense was that he had just taken the garbage out the previous week so . . . again with the garbage?  He thought this chore was excessive, and I'm inclined to agree with him.  Every time I brush my teeth, for instance, I think: "This is bullshit.  This is unfair."  So Homer promised that his employees would do everything and I mean everything: wash diapers, air out your stinkables, clean your house, the list went on and on.  He was, as you might imagine, immensely popular with his customers.  He was, as you might imagine as well, able to run through the entire years' budget for the sanitation department in a couple of weeks, earning the ire of his superiors and the extremely angry union of large men who worked for the department.  

Be Careful What You Pray For

We owe it to ourselves to preserve the old ways of life, the traditions.  But we owe it to ourselves not to be so conditioned to doing something the same way for so long that we stagnate for the sake of it.

Life is one long courtship of things we want and fear.  When something is to be avoided at all costs, we tend to vision it so vividly that it has no choice but to come our way.  The same mental law turns back what we want as well.  We have to be careful about what we want because we are apt to get it.

Step Six

When I face a challenging situation in my life I either try to ignore it, pretend it doesn't exist, or I attack it ferociously, try to bend it to my will.  This is the anti-definition of mindfulness.  This is not what brings me peace in the long run.  Calmness arrives in my life when I just look at something as some thing and don't attach a label to it.  It's a thing, that's all.  It isn't good and it isn't bad, it just is.  It won't last forever and it won't define me or kill me or ruin everything and it won't last forever - did I mention it won't last forever? -  and in all likelihood I won't remember a thing about it in a week.  In a year?  Forget about it.  It's gone.  Getting rid of my three favorite words - never, forever, always - isn't an easy task.

Step Six nuggets and tidbits and gems and flotsam and jetsam concerning willingness and how it differs from the action we actually take . . .  

"Therefore, it seems plain that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much  perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by.  This is the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God."

My tendency is to avoid anything that I can't master completely.  If I'm not sure I'll succeed in this implausible way then I don't even get started.  Perfection?  Who can attain perfection at anything?  Perfection is a curse.  I try to get better, not perfect.

There are answers, of course: 

"The only urgent thing is that we make a beginning, and keep trying.  Open-mindedness!  It will seldom matter how haltingly we walk.  The only question will be 'Are we ready? Delay is dangerous, and rebellion may be fatal.  This is the exact point at which we abandon limited objectives, and move towards God's will for us."

The phrase "another pleasant rationalization" pops in, makes an appearance.  Nobody knows I'm an alcoholic!  Sure.  Sure, they don't.

Touchstones of the World, Unite!

"Rejoice when the going gets rough.  To rejoice in difficulty doesn't seem reasonable, because the natural way would be to give up and cry.  But we rebound from trouble faster when we turn off the tears and turn on the joy.  If we have never done it before, we need to learn how to think joy and act joyful, because the heart is listening - and it is out of the hear that all issues are settled."

I like this idea of saying good things even when you don't believe in good things.  I believe that we can change our thinking for the good when we repeat stuff that's good.  If I say I'm old, I'll feel old.  If I think I'm stupid or I can't do this or can't do that, then I'll throw the proverbial towel in the proverbial ring, and decide I can't do it.  

"Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth."  When I first heard this much beloved and oft quoted aphorism of A.A.  I immediately thought: "Fuck's a touchstone?"  It is "Any physical or intellectual measure by which the validity or merit of a concept can be tested."     

Hopefully those of us who have been around for a long time can pass some of this hard-earned perspective on to the newer members.  I hope that I can say something to a thirty year old or a forty year old that is going to be received more openly than when it comes from a parent, with all of the baggage and history and prejudices connected to that relationship.  And I hope that the remove from the individual that we can offer is helpful, too.  After all, if I offer a suggestion and you don't take it, then it's no skin off my ass and what do I know, anyhow?

I believe my dry wit and gentle teasing is well-received, until the times that it isn't.  This is bound to happen.  Not often, but it happens.  I believe that most of the time it makes people smile.  It makes me smile.  I believe that I've developed a fine touch with my teasing although it wasn't always this way.  Dry wit is often birthed in sarcasm, delivered with a heavy, combatitive hand, and sarcasm is "hate with a smile."  When I was younger my sarcasm was a defense mechanism and it was used to belittle and diminish people from time to time.  I give myself a pass on much of this - it's not easy growing up especially when you're tossed in with a lot of other kids growing up.  We could be cruel, all of us.

Destruction and Fatalities and Beatings, Oh, My

"You see yourself endlessly grasping for something, anything, to hold onto in the midst of all these shifting sands, and you see that there is nothing to hold onto, nothing that doesn't change.  You watch pleasurable experiences arise and fall and you see that they never last; you watch pain come uninvited and you watch yourself anxiously struggling to throw it off; you see yourself fail.  It all happens over and over while you stand back quietly and just watch it all work.  This is known as dukkha, the unsatisfactoriness of life.  You see the way suffering inevitably follows in the wake of clinging, as soon as you grasp anything, pain inevitably follows."   

"This feeling of being at one with God and man, this emerging from isolation through the open and honest sharing of our terrible burden of guilt, brings us to a resting point . . . "  Step Five, 12&12

I'm always tickled when I remember that many people believe that our Twelve Steps came out of the six principles that guided the Washingonians.  I can imagine a scenario where Bill W thought: "Wow, those six principles are just perfect" and then sitting for a while before deciding to add six more.  I'm surprised he didn't get up to twenty or thirty Steps.  If one is good then a hundred is better, right?  What ever I'm dealing with I can see no problem with just doubling it.  It has got to be better.  It reminds me of the survey Central Office sent out during the Fellowship's formative years asking each of the groups to send along their membership rules and receiving like forty-two thousand rules.  I have a great complicator.  I can complicate the shit out of anything.

Here are some words found on one page of Step Six: Fatal obsession.  Destroy their lives.  Self-destruction.  Destroy himself (so that's three times with the destroying yourself).  Terrific beating administered by alcohol.  Destruction and fatalities and beatings.  Wow, why did I decide to give all of that goodness up?

A few weeks ago a young man got on the highway near where I live and drove for a bit going the wrong way before slamming head-on into another car and killing two men.  He complained of some back pain.  Well, he's going to have plenty of time to rest that back in the years he's going to spend in prison.

Ouch

"This is a riddle of our existence, the full answer to which may be only in the mind of God."

Step Six, 12&12

I've taken a lot of comfort in this sentence over the years.  It has helped me come to terms with the idea that there's suffering and pain in the world.  I, personally, would have devised a system with no free will and no suffering.  I don't get suffering.  I don't get why an all-powerful Entity would set things up so that animals kill each other for food and humans kill each other for so many reasons I couldn't list them all here without screaming in frustration.  I don't get it.  And if you don't have a belief in a Higher Power concept then why in the world did evolution and natural selection move things forward so that humans have an almost limitless capacity for cruelty?  Why did genetics make that choice?

Sometimes it be like that.  It is what it is.  And it has always been that way as far as we can tell.  Anthropologists have been uncovering examples of cruelty and violence that occurred centuries ago, millennia ago.  Why did some ruler decide five thousand years ago that sacrificing a virgin to appease a god was a good idea?  What was the thought process?  What kind of divine power would want to take the life of a young girl as a token of appreciation?  How about a Moon Pie and a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper instead?  At least you can enjoy the snack!  Did the higher power watch the blood sacrifice and say: "Wow, I feel better now that the child had her throat slit?"  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!  You'd like to imagine the Higher Power shouting: "What the fuck are you doing? Stop that RIGHT NOW!" and just burning up the whole mess and starting over again.  If my creation did that stuff I would figured out that there must have been a whole lot of crack involved at some point.

For my sanity I don't question The System any more.  It's The System.  Divine intervention or selective evolution or random, dumbass luck, it doesn't do me any good to worry it to death.  Sickness and death and pain and loss is part of the human condition.  I'm good with that.

Where Is My Watch?

"As meditative mindfulness develops, your whole experience of life changes.  Your experience of being alive, the very sensation of being conscious, becomes lucid and precise, no longer just an unnoticed background for your preoccupations.  It becomes a thing consistently perceived.  Each passing moment stand out as itself; the moments no longer blend together in an unnoticed blur.  Nothing is glossed over or taken for granted, no experience labeled as merely ordinary.  Everything looks bright and special.  You perceive the universe as a great flowing river of experience.  Your most cherished possessions are slipping away, and so is your very life.  Yet this impermanence is no reason for grief.  You stand there transfixed."  

The italics are mine.

If I take the time to study the human mind and its connection to perception I often find that most of what I perceive as "reality" is really no more than my mind filling in the blanks in a way that it hopes will help us make sense of life, rounding out memories and experiences in a healthy way.  While the mind is impressively large for most of us it's not possible to take in all of the sensory data that is hitting our receptors without becoming overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the information.  So we fill in the blanks.  Our minds take what our senses are perceiving and blends it all together into a narrative that helps us . . . well . . . not freak out.  Our minds take our memories and reconstruct them, smoothing out the rough, unpleasant parts, so that who we are today, who we think we are today, who we want to be today, jives with our past actions.  Most of what we perceive is stored for a short time, a very short time, and then it's junked or our short term memories would be overloaded with crap.  Everything you've ever perceived isn't up there "somewhere," I can assure you of that.

I have one of those hyperactive minds that's always thinking about too many things all at once.  Sometimes I have an impressive recall of something that happened long ago but I also have a distressing and annoying ability to chuck some information that just happened.  I'm allowed to put my phone in one place and one place only.  I can't set it down somewhere randomly or I'll never find it again.  I have a drawer for my watch.  If I take it off it goes in that drawer.  SuperK and I have spent hours looking for things I've misplaced.  She never misplaces anything.  One time we looked for an hour to find my watch which I had slipped off and placed inside my show while I was stretching outside.  Had no recollection of doing that.  The hiding spot was impressive.  It took a long time to find it.

If I'm mindful, if I'm present to the best of my ability, I can remember maybe 30% of my stupid hiding places.  Maybe.  It's a stretch.

Sometimes It Be Like That

This meditation path I'm on - listening to my breath and trying to be present, grasping onto nothing, ignoring nothing, watching the stream of images flicker through my consciousness - assures me that I'm right where I need to be, in this perfect moment, making these choices and decisions with the tools I currently possess, assured that they are the right choices and decisions, assured of this because of the open channel I have with my Higher Power.  It's not always open and sometimes the message is unclear, a little garbled, kind of static-ey, and sometimes I willfully ignore the message, as clear as it may be, but I'm really trying to stay locked onto that channel.

Satan's greatest trick is making the world believe that Satan doesn't exist.  

Sometimes I get what I want and sometimes I don't get what I want and sometimes I get whomped up 'side the head with a heavy stick because I'm just not listening, but I believe I get what I need.  My path isn't always lined with winning lottery tickets.  Sometimes there's a lot of dog doo on the path.  That's how it is, here on this unpredictable and random planet.  It just goes that way.  So much of life is out of my control.  Sometimes when I'm trying to land my plane the skies are clear, there's no turbulence, no congestion in the skies, and sometimes one of my engines is on fire and there's a thing in my eye and it's raining and lightening is hitting the plane and it's all I can do to land the damn thing.

A friend in AA painted me a little rock that says "Sometimes It Be Like That."

Screw guilt!  Screw remorse!  I clean up my messes as best as I can and I move on down the road. 

God, I'm Thinking Too Much Again

I was driving to the meeting this morning, facing another possible confrontational experience with Political Cap Lady, mulling over a couple of our Traditions, all of which were born out of much pain and conflict and ill will among members chaos that at one time threatened to destroy The Fellowship.  I like the warning that often people with a lot of sobriety fall roughly into these two camps: Bleeding Deacon and Elder Statesman.  Because I've been sober a long time and I'm very regular at A.A. meetings - including lots of literature meetings where we read our books carefully - I realize I have some responsibility to stand up for what I see as "good A.A."  And because I'm totally self-righteous and self-assured and extremely Type A confident I plow forward with certainty that my own personal rectitude should be the standard that everyone else needs to live up to.  I think I've been whipsawing between these two extremes.  Should I speak up, share my own experience, strength, and hope, humbly aware that I'm not a total idiot when it comes to recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous?  Or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?  Especially since I HATE the political figure this cap is promoting.  Am I letting this color my opinion?  Would I take the same firm stand if it was someone wearing clothing promoting my side of the political spectrum?  I flatter myself that I would.  I flatter myself all of the time about everything, though, so my spidey-sense tingles when I get too smug about what's going on in my head.

Here are the facts:

1.  I talked to a lot of people with a lot of sobriety, including a few from a meeting that attracts a lot of guys who don't agree with me politically.  Almost to a person they were firm in their belief that this is not acceptable behavior.   One guy didn't think he would say anything but no one defended her behavior.

2.  I wrote to New York and - God bless 'em - they were vague and hands-off-ey as ever.  They wanted to know if it was the particular type of cap she was wearing?  Did we object to all caps?  Was the woman promoting herself as a spokesperson for A.A. as a whole or our meeting in particular?  I mean the college I went to has a fiercesome rivalry with another school.  Could I object to a meeting where everyone was wearing caps from a hated sports rival?  Some of this stuff is silly and some of it is ridiculous but it makes one think.

3.  I talked to a couple of newcomers who were oblivious to any controversy.  Part of me understands that most newcomers are oblivious to everything but also believes that just because you aren't hip to The Traditions yet doesn't mean all behavior can be tolerated.  But I get it - when I was new I was just trying not to drink one day at a time.  Violations of our Traditions were things best left to Bleeding Deacons like myself.t 

Isn't this part and parcel of A.A.?  Isn't this tendency to chaos and disorder typical of us?  Don't we make mountains out of molehills while ignoring the large anvil that is teetering just above our heads?  I think there's a passage in some religious book about pointing out the spec in someone's eye while ignoring the two by four in our own.  Locating the defects of others is our specialty.  Deconstructing our own is a task we often avoid.  "Children of Chaos" our book screams at one point.  Defiant brats, rebellious and resistant to messages we don't want to hear.  Self-centered to the extreme and immature.  That's us and that's the book talking, not me.

Now EVERYBODY'S Chiming In

Virtue:  Doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong; a disposition to choose actions that show high moral standards.

I dunno . . . I intuit that most people have a pretty good idea of right and wrong baked into their DNA.  I'm sure that some of this is socialized into us but I'm convinced we know what good behavior is and what it isn't.  "Don't be an asshole,", right?

A line from the 12 & 12 that has always stuck with me: "Prudence is a virtue that carries a high  rating."  How about the virtues of faith, hope, love, justice, solidarity, temperance, courage, and practical wisdom.  That's from the Catholic Church.  Nothing the matter with that stuff.

Here's another: "Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous."  Sheesh, the crap that comes out of my self-righteous mind.  It's embarrassing to share this crap sometimes.  I insist on sharing this crap with other people, though, for my own peace of mind.

The Buddhist dude: "These reactions (namely, disappointment and frustration) arise out of your own inability to get what you want, your fear of losing what you have already gained, and your habit of never being satisfied with what you have."  Step Seven in the 12 & 12: "The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear - primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed, or would fail to get something we demanded."  Lockstep thinking from a Western mid-twentieth century spiritual movement and a far older moral philosophy that has its roots deep into the Far East.  Total agreement, as far as I can see.

Cherokees again: "There is a time to be bold but it takes wisdom to know when it is.  If something is worth having, it is worth waiting for, worth working toward.  But the fear of losing something before we have had a chance to make it our own can stir us to take risks that are unwise."  Is this or is this not just another interpretation of A.A.'s beloved Serenity Prayer which, of course, was penned by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, a Christian theological ethicist long before Bill W and Dr. Bob knew each other.

It's all the same stuff.  Nobody is coming up with anything new.