Wise and Calm, or Calm and Wise, I'm Not Sure Which

Calm:  Undisturbed; unruffled; tranquil; still.
Wise:   Having or showing good judgment; sagacious; prudent; discreet.


The other day someone described my behavior as "wise and calm."  This was someone who obviously has no idea what the hell's going on.  This has been happening more frequently as I get older.  It did not happen when I was drinking, I can assure you of that.  Phrases like "nightmare" and "train wreck" and "asshole"  come to mind.  I recall "big asshole" being bandied about on more than one instance.


Wise I can see, maybe, on a good day.  When someone says "wise" I assume that they really mean "old."  I think it's hard not to get a bit wiser as you age.  Maybe wise means "not stupid."  If you quit sticking your hand into a running fan after losing several fingers in earlier hand-running fan encounters it hardly seems appropriate to call this wisdom.  My cat could figure that one out.  She's a pretty smart cat but she's still a cat.


Calm is more problematic.  I wouldn't call myself calm.  Calmer, sure, but not calm.  Maybe when I appear calm folks are actually seeing me when I'm tired.  Calm and exhausted look the same sometimes.  I'm better at appearing calm.  I found that when I wasn't calm and not trying to appear calm that I alarmed people.  I try not to do that anymore, with varying degrees of success.


Calm is a parked car.  Appearing calm is a parked car, with the engine turned on, and a foot on the accelerator, pushing it to the floor.  The car isn't moving but it shaking and making a hell of a lot of noise.  That's how I feel.  What you see on the outside is not what is going on underneath.  It's the old duck analogy -- smoothly floating on top of the water, little webbed feet churning away just under the surface.


Strangely enough, it works some of the time.  If I pretend that I'm calm, then I feel calm.


Calmer, not calm.


-er:  Added to many adjectives and adverbs to form the comparative degree, as later, greater.

The Small, Still Voice

Herr Luber and I have been discussing some ongoing uncertainties in our lives and pondering how meditation and prayer can be part of the solution.  The Program has definitely put me in the Solution Business.  I know, I know, you're thinking: "Horseface?  In the solution business?!"  I will admit to having a long and storied love affair with the Problem Business.  I do love wallowing around in The Problem.  It's so warm and comforting and familiar there.  I'm proficient at problems; it's the solutions that elude me.


Meditation seems as if it's going to be such a waste of time before I get started with it.  I'm a guy and meditation isn't our thing, generally thinking.   I fix things following time-honored techniques, using my massive will and impressive intellect.  Sitting quietly and listening to my Inner Voice doesn't seem as productive as taking a jackhammer to something.  And then, to complicate matters, I don't feel like I've accomplished anything when I'm done meditating.  With the jackhammer, I can gaze approvingly at the remains of the wall.  I get up when I'm done meditating and I'm all: "OK, well, whatever."  It doesn't feel like anything has changed.  I put down the jackhammer and I'm like: "Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about."


The thing about my recovery is that I don't do anything until I see that it's going to be intensely practical.  I just won't make the effort unless I see some results; concrete results in my daily life.  It's the same thing with The Program: although I still don't really understand how it works I run into a lot of relatively happy people.  I'm curious, then, as to what they did to get relatively happy.  I'm not doing anything they suggest if they stay pissed and depressed.  It's the happy that I like.


The meditation helps me be quiet so I can hear some direction.  The direction isn't delivered with the subtlety of a football coach yelling at me through an amplified bullhorn.  Instead, I sense a slight shift in the direction of the breeze.  I get a sense that I should stop moving forward or maybe pick up my feet and get moving.  It becomes intuitive.


What's the opposite?  Jackhammer-itive?

Terminally Unique

Different:  Not alike; dissimilar; unlike most others; unusual.


When I was drinking my life was dominated by the feeling that I didn't fit in.  I didn't fit in anywhere.    It was profoundly uncomfortable to feel that way.  It was as if I was standing on the outside of a closed circle, peering over the heads of everyone else, trying to see what was going on in the center.  I felt excluded, different than anyone else.


Part of these feelings I can attribute to my disease of alcoholism; part I can attribute to normal teenage angst that I never bothered to outgrow.  It was very convenient to imagine that I was one of The Others.  I thought that no one else understood me.  I was terminally unique, and I decided that I was going to stand in the dark and resent the hell out of everyone who didn't  love me.  I was going to will them to see what an amazing, special specimen that I was.  Or I was going to die and let them suffer horribly at my funeral, full of regret that they didn't treat me better when I was around.


Brother.  No wonder I irritated everyone.  I was irritating.


One of the greatest blessings of my recovery is that I have finally grown into my own skin.  I know who I am, more or less, and I'm comfortable with that.  I still people-please too much but it's not my sole vocation anymore.  I don't try to pretend that I'm not who I am or that I like what I don't like.  It's OK.  


People ask SuperK what I'm like at home.  "Like this," she says.  "This is what he's like at home."  I feel good about that, even though she's probably lying.  I'm consistent.  I feel a little different still but I like that.


Does any one know what I'm talking about?

I've Got Nothing New

Some oldies but goodies . . . .


I don't know what's best for me most of the time.  The things that I'm sure I HAVE to have frequently blow up in my face when I get them.  This is why I don't ask for specific things any more, unless I really, really HAVE TO HAVE them.  Then I go for it when I pray, unspooling hours and hours of instructions.  If I'm really motivated god does exactly what I want god to do.  And the flip side of the coin is that when the events transpire that I believe are a TOTAL DISASTER they often turn out to be wonderful blessings in disguise.


I cringe a little when I hear phrases like "Pain is the touchstone to all spiritual growth."  There's a little too much pop psychology there for my comfort and I'm not sure what a touchstone is, exactly, but I can work around my reservations because it's so frequently true.  I grow when I'm challenged.  I don't do the hard work unless I'm uncomfortable.


Touchstone:  Any test or criterion for determining genuineness or value; a type of black stone formerly used to test the purity of gold or silver by the streak left on it when it was rubbed with the metal.


I had a long talk with Herr Luber yesterday about the stress of Change and The Unknown.  Stress can be very stressful.  But enduring the stress, developing the patience and quiet and presence to shoulder on through almost always leaves me in a better place.  Now, I'm not suggesting that stress is my favorite thing in the world, but I don't run from it like it's the plague any more, either.  I come out in a better place, tougher and meaner and more resilient.  


My getting fired is an apt example.  When people express their sympathy or outrage I'm all: "Eh.  I've been fired before.  I'm a drunk.  I know how to get fired and live to fight another day."  I got the best job I ever had after getting fired.  The dross was burned off and I was in a better place.


I flash back to my first trip to a jungle in Ecuador.  It involved a plane landing at a god-forsaken air strip hacked out of the brush; a 3 hour, bone-rattling ride in an open-air jeep over what passed for a semblance of a road, interrupted once by a long interrogation with teen-aged soldiers carrying Uzis; and concluding with a 2 hour motorized canoe trip up a winding tributary of the Amazon, vines and other serrated vegetation lashing my face the whole time.  


Ending up being one of my best vacation experiences.  Not easy -- memorable

Planes, Pools, and Coffee Machines

Actions:  Behavior; habitual conduct.  (You want to hear a synonym for actions?  Battle.  How cool is that?).


The Program teaches me that I need to pay attention to my actions.  It's amazing I need to be told that how I behave is important.  I thought that what was important was how I intended to behave.  Actions are for the unsophisticated.  Thinking is where it's at.  I read and re-read the part of The Book that suggests the world judges us on our actions, not our intentions.


"Really?" I said, genuinely surprised.  "Really?!"


When I got on an airplane a couple of hours after being discharged I found myself in front of some guy who didn't have an inside voice.  He wasn't in the row behind me, either; he was a few rows back.  I'm not even sure he was on the same plane.  He may have been inside the terminal at an airport in the next state.  Why is that the people who don't have an inside voice are never very interesting?


"Higher Power," I prayed.  "Please crash this plane so I don't have to listen to that guy any more."


I believe I've mentioned that prayer is not my strong suit.  I don't know what my strong suit is anymore.  I don't think I even have a suit.  I think I gave all of my suits to Goodwill.


Anyway, the following day I went with SuperK over to our exercise club to swim.  We popped into the hot tub for a minute to warm up before getting into the pool, which was crowded that morning.  Things are always crowded when I'm not in a good mood.  God thinks this is funny, to teach me patience by putting me in long lines.  I would prefer being struck patient.  That would be easier on me.


A woman came into the pool area and put a bottle of water on the floor in front of one of the swimming lanes, then joined us in the hot tub.  After a minute I got out and went over to the lane that she apparently wanted to reserve, even though you can't do that.  This isn't Hertz -- this is the pool.  We don't take reservations for pool lanes.  You can't say a pool lane for later.  You can get in the pool or you can stay out of the pool -- those are the two choices.  I pointed down at her bottle as if to say: "Do you want me to throw this in the garbage can or should I bounce it off your forehead?"


"I was getting ready to swim," she said.
"Like right now?" I asked, standing in front of the pool lane she wasn't standing in front of, being in the hot tub and all.
"In like 30 seconds," she replied.


I was trying to keep my temper chained up in the fiery pit that it calls home, but it was straining to get out.


"Were you waiting?" she said, stupidly.
I sighed.  "It's not that important."  I thought she would see that she was IN THE WRONG and let me swim first, which she DID NOT DO.  I sat along the full pool for 5 minutes until another lane opened up, stewing and boiling and judging.


Five minutes.  Can you believe that?  Five minutes.  I should have drowned her.


Today I went into Starbucks for a cup of coffee.  After the very nice young woman rang up my overpriced drink I remembered that I need a pound of coffee for home.  If you buy a pound of coffee then you get a free overpriced drink.


"Go ahead and pick out the coffee you want and then I'll ring it up," she said.  
"Why don't you go over there and pick it out yourself?" I wanted to say.  "I just told you what I wanted.  I'm the fucking customer and you're the fucking employee.  Don't make me paw through your stuff looking for something I want to buy."


Vaguely, I sensed that I was overreacting, so I went over and got the coffee myself.  When I returned to the counter I asked her to credit me for the overpriced drink that I had already paid for so that I could get a free overpriced drink with my pound of coffee, but someone else had gotten in line in front of me, so I had to wait.  It has been a bad week for me as far as queuing up is concerned.  I'm glad I didn't end up in the emergency room.


"Oh," she said, which worried me.  "That promotion only applies to this type of overpriced drink, not the kind of overpriced drink that you already paid for."  I have buying coffee beans from this chain for 15 years, always getting the kind of overpriced drink that I had already purchased, only for free.


This type of dialogue went on for a bit longer and none of it was to my credit.  I did not, however, buy the fucking coffee beans without getting a free overpriced coffee drink.


"So you don't want the beans? "she asked.


I thought of my sponsor saying: "Try not to talk, Horseface.  Just try not to talk.  It's only going to make things worse."


See how it is with actions?  I pay attention to them today.  While getting discharged and traveling and seeing my family didn't upset me too much, obviously it upset me more than I was willing to admit.  I could tell because my actions were exaggerated and inappropriate.  

And I Deserved It!!

Deserved:  Well earned; merited.


The thing is that I deserved to get fired.  I was no longer very productive at my job and I hadn't been in quite a while.  I didn't enjoy what I was doing or the people I worked with or the philosophy of the company or even their motto, which was: "Why?  Because We Don't Like You."  Any two of those factors put together would be a good reason to move on, or to be moved on by force.  


When I started working on inventories and tried to take a semi-honest look at the reasons behind my dismissal from various jobs, both drunk and in sobriety, I kept coming across a central theme.  Me.  The central theme in all of the various, wide-ranging scenarios, was me, Horseface Steve.  I spent so much time trying to blame other people for my difficulties or discomfort that I never got around to the Horseface Steve part which is, of course, the most important part.  I found that I almost always deserved to lose the jobs that I lost.  Moreover, I found that people I worked for were generally good and decent, and that usually I should have been moved on way, way before it actually happened.


Still, it's not the best feeling in the world to get fired.  (I do like that the phrase "to be fired" is a colloquial take on the original term "to discharge."  Apparently, people used to get "discharged" from jobs and we dumbed it down to a weaponry analogy).  The actual firing was kind of like knowing that someone small was going to punch me in the gut very gently, and here it comes!  It wasn't the stunning blind-side sucker punch that used to stun me when I was drunk and stupid, but that didn't make it pleasant.


Next adventure, please.

Fired!

Fire:  (Pun on discharge), (Colloq.), to dismiss from a position; discharge.


I got fired today.


That statement should stand on its own merits but there you go.


"I'm on a plane trying to get home for the weekend so I'll get to the point.  We've decided to go another direction with our representation in your corner of the world.  Don't take this personally -- we appreciate your efforts over the years -- but we've decided to make a change," said the faceless bureaucrat who apparently is tasked with making these decisions.  I really don't know -- I've never met him.  I think he's my boss's boss's boss.  What would that make him?  My great-grand boss?


"How am I supposed to take it?" I asked.  "Impersonally?  Mechanically?  Spiritually?  By transferring it to another person?"  I didn't really see how I was supposed to take it if not personally.  It was an extremely personal thing.  I could tell that this guy did stuff like this all the time.  I don't think he had trouble falling asleep that night, either.  He did it on the phone and it didn't take 45 seconds.  He was controlled and unemotional and careful to keep everything very legal.  


This was always a classy, classy organization.  45 seconds on the phone with a guy I've never met on a Friday afternoon after 15 years of labor.  I've worked for this organization, in one form or another, since 1997.  I'm not that good with dates but I believe we are closing in on 2012.  I would have hoped for 75 seconds at least.  Not more than that, of course.  That would be piggish and self-centered.


"I'm wondering why you didn't let me know that you were unhappy with my work.  If you had discussed this with me maybe I could have made some changes," I suggested.  He didn't say anything.  This was OK because I knew exactly why they weren't happy with my efforts, which were intermittent and pathetic and quite half-hearted.  But I figured if I was going to get fired I was going to make the guy squirm a little, the piece of shit.


"Hey, here's something funny," I said.  "I moved 2500 miles away last year and you guys never figured it out.   You're really on the ball.  You're really right on top of things.  That's a hell of an organization you work for."


If you would have told me at the start of the year that I would have lasted this long I would have laughed in your face.  And SuperK told me more than once that this was my last trip back to The Old City to work.  Regrettably, that didn't stop her from freaking out a little bit, apparently fouling up a pretty good nap.


Be careful what you pray for because you might get it.


Here's the thing: What I was doing wasn't right.  It wasn't awful but it wasn't right.  I had decided that because I wasn't treated very well by this organization in some crucial past dealings that I had earned the right to behave poorly in return.  Here's a quote: "To escape looking at the wrongs we have done another, we resentfully focus on the wrong he has done us.


And I didn't say any of those things.  I made everything up except for what he said to me.


I tell my buddies all the time: "Do me a favor -- try not to talk to today.  Try not to say anything.  Your day will go much better."  


Yeah, tell me about it.