This is Seaweed and I'm Listening

Meditate:  To contemplate; to keep the mind fixed on something; to study.
Meditate: (Fellowship Wisdom) - To listen.

Thinking about my friend during my morning Quiet Time.  Here's what came to me as I attempted to meditate and I felt compelled to share this with a few of my closest friends.  I hope it doesn't come across as too self-aware.   I don't really know what I'm doing and I certainly don't think I'm doing it better than you.  I do, nevertheless, find that my meditation practice opens doors that lead to some odd and surprising places.

So I'm in my morning meditation and I keep getting this strong image of Mo.  He's sitting there and he's whole.  His mind is at rest and his body is perfect.  He's breathing very deeply and slowly.  I'm not sure where he is but it's sunny and warm and I see clouds and an indistinct background.  It's quiet.  It's not earth but I don't recognize it.  He's watching all of us with a small smile - a smirk? - on his face, one of those smiles that doesn't show any teeth.  He's engaged with all of us - it's just that we can't see him, that's all.  It's as if he's watching through a one way mirror or has access to a bunch of security cameras..  He's making joyous little quips as if he was right in the midst of us. laughing at his own wit, certain that we'd all find what he was saying funny, too. There's no violence or angst or fear.  He simply is.  In my mind's eye I see him as he was in high school although he has decided not to wear a tie or jacket - khakis, blue dress shirt open at the collar, dress shoes.  He looks very comfortable to me.  It's a good image.  I'm happy about it.  I'm happy it has to come to me like this.  I don't doubt any of it, not for a minute.  I'm sure of it.  I'm sure this is how it is.  For me.  You guys will find your image.  I'm sure of that, too.

Wise Seaweed. Maybe. Sometimes, at Best.

"Knowledge is really about facts and ideas that we acquire through study, research, investigation, observation, or experience.  Wisdom is the ability to discern and judge which aspects of that knowledge are true, right, lasting, and applicable to your life."

Or . . . 

"Wisdom is the knowledge that is gained by having many experiences in life."

A old high school friend committed suicide a few days ago.  Hung himself at 60 after having battled depression his whole life.  I've been involved in a group email thread with people mourning, reminisicing, sharing funny stories.  

The following passages I sent to people who reached out to me directly about some of the things I wrote.  Mental illness, substance abuse, depression, grieving, these are all complex, profound topics that don't have easy answers, that can't be easily explained by acquiring knowledge.  It makes me think about all of the shit I've gone through in my life to get to where I am, shit that I haven't always enjoyed enduring, shit that maybe gave me the wisdom to be able to speak to someone else who's in pain.  When someone I know is going through a tough patch I've been known to say "Wow, you're really going to be able to help someone some day."  Sounds shitty at the time but it usually comes true.

My experience is that people who suffer with mental illness can be very clever at masking it -  they cope by presenting this front that everything is OK. I'm sure that when someone at work asked him how he was doing he didn't respond with "Actually I'm pretty depressed and I've had some thoughts of ending my own life."  It doesn't go over well in the real world. So for those of us who were close to him I suggest that there was very little chance we could have done anything or said anything that would have helped in this case. It's not your fault.  He suffered from the incomprehensible. There was no logic that could have helped. So I'm going to miss my friend - and right here at the start I'm mad at him - but I'm not going to blame myself. That won't help me at all. I do know that when someone talks about suicide I really try to pay attention.  I realize that most of the time the person won't act on it but I never take it for granted.

I also suggest that grief doesn't follow a formula.  It may come quickly and it may not show up for a while - it may manifest itself in an outward show of grief and it may not - it may pass quickly and it may hang around for a long, long time.  There's no right or wrong way for me to do it as long as I'm open to the grieving. I have to grieve - that's all I know. If I'm angry right now or not especially sad or wracked with anguish it's alright.

The Fellowship has had a big effect on me over the years in regards to helplessness in the face of a irrational behavior.  Irrational behavior that can lead to death, especially now that heroin has become so prevalent. All of the conversations I've had with people who are killing themselves slowly with alcohol - who know they are killing themselves - who want to stop but can't make that rational jump to actually stopping.  I'm not sure if it has made me a little jaded or a little wiser but it has made me a lot more accepting about what I can and cannot do.  I certainly don't blame myself, wonder if I could have said just the right thing to make a difference. If you've convinced yourself that sticking a needle in your arm filled with you're not sure what that you bought from some slimeball . . . you're pretty unreachable.

He hung himself.  People that mean to go through with suicide use weapons or they use a rope.  There's no cry for help, there's no hope that someone will interrupt the process like there is with pills or wrist cutting or carbon monoxide.  He had a plan. He thought this through carefully.  This wasn't a spontaneous act.  He was beyond the point of saying "maybe I should call Jeff and discuss this with him, see if it's a good idea."  This has nothing to do with intelligence or wonderful life circumstances, either. That's why it's called mental illness.

I recall the medication component of our talks, too.  It's still amazing to me today how little the medical/scientific community really understands about the medicine they often prescribe - how it works, why it works for one person but not another with a similar diagnosis, why it seems to stop working after a while.  There are many blind studies done - where one group is given the live medicine and another a sugar pill - and it isn't unusual for the results to be inconclusive. The medicine can't be definitively proven to do anything at all. Shows how hard it is to treat mental illness.

I'd be happy to talk with you or chat electronically.  I know how tough this is.

Is There Anybody Out There?

Complicate:  To modify so as to make something intricate or difficult.

Wednesday is a Big Book study.  We finished up the chapter We Agnostics today, experiencing the usual overwrought kerfuffle about why the whole concept is stupid and doesn't apply to the person who is - at that moment - bitching about the whole concept.  This is what we do: Complicate.  We object.  We explain why something that we don't like won't work for us.  In the Midwest people shot darts my way over my refusal to close a meeting with The Lord's Prayer  - here people are annoyed when I point out that they're working awfully hard to object to something that so many of us find important.

Damned if you do - Damned if you don't.

Anyway, a few of us continued the discussion outside the meeting, trying to come up with accessible and easily understood techniques for getting in touch with a Higher Power.  You know - do something nice for someone else, take the next right action, do what's in front of you, stuff like that.  One of my friends had to take his dad to the doctor today.

"There you go," I said.  "That's God for you today.  Simple as that."

As we were walking down the street to get to our cars we noticed that my wife's sponsor was watching a young man who just started coming to the meeting finish putting a spare tire on her car.  All of us thanked him for helping this elderly woman out on a rainy morning.  She handed him a sheaf of one dollar bills, apologizing that it was all of the money she had on her.  He refused the money.   I opened my wallet and pulled out a twenty, insisting that he take it.  His car wasn't anything to brag about so I assumed that the money would be appreciated.

He drove off.  My wife's sponsor put her money back in her wallet, bid us adieu, and also drove off.  I was laughing robustly at this point.  My intent wasn't to pay for this service, I don't think.  I believe I expected her to offer to repay me or at least give me the greasy one dollar bills wadded up in her fist.  I believe I would have refused her offer.  I also believe that I would have been even more impressed with myself than I was at that moment, and I was goddamned impressed already.

My friend did not say: "There you go.  That's God for you today.  Simple as that."

And for that . . . I am grateful.

How Am I Insane? Let Me Count the Ways

Insane:  Exhibiting unsoundness or disorder of mind.

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

Most of the people I know with some mild form of mental illness keep this hidden to others.  I'm always surprised when people are surprised that I struggle so mightily with depression and anxiety.  

"I didn't know!" they'll say.  I think most people would put me in the cool, calm, and collected category, unaware that inside things can be awhirl.  It's the duck analogy - on the surface you see a smooth transit but under the water legs are furiously churning and all is chaos.  This is what people with mental illness do -  cope and adapt and manage it.  We can't walk around in the world saying: "Good morning.  How am I?  I'm sort of terrified and I don't why."  It wouldn't go over very well.  It would have been problematic in a sales call, for instance, or on a first date, unless the woman I was with was even more terrified than me.

I am excluding those poor souls wandering around downtown talking about aliens in the government fucking with their brain waves.  They're not hiding it.  Actually, what do I know?  Maybe they are hiding it.  Maybe the behavior they're exhibiting is pretty subtle for them.

I talked to a buddy yesterday who's a religious guy.  Maybe he's spiritual, too, but he's sure religious.  He has found a center to his life that makes sense to him.  He uses it to transcend?  evade? mask? overcome? many difficulties in his life.  I've got a faith, too, but not to his degree.  I understand the idea of learning a perspective on things so that you can look beyond the aches and pains and trials and tribulations of life - this can be hard to put into practice and most of us seem to have a few things that stick in our craw and are hard to dislodge.  My wife is long-suffering about her family - I become bogged down in the physical aches and pains of life.

He wondered what brought me "joy," cautioning that there's a difference between happiness - a transitory feeling - and joy - a deeper seated, more profound feeling.  Here's one take on the topic:

That is because happiness is an emotion in which we "experience feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense pleasure," whereas joy "is a stronger, less common feeling than happiness."  We experience joy when we achieve selflessness to the point of personal sacrifice.  We feel joy when we are spiritually connected to God or people.  Joy, on the other hand, is at least grounded in the idea that something is good for someone else.  We have joy when -- even in our suffering -- we are acting toward someone else's well-being.   If you have ever selflessly given of yourself or that which you own you are certainly familiar with this feeling.

I don't know - that's a ton of parsing.  However, I intuit the difference.  I am also eager to reject it as too religiousy.

Your Geography Quiz

I enjoyed interacting with the staff on our cruise a lot more than with the other passengers.  Frankly, I found them to be more interesting.  And I find that privileged people can be boorish and self-absorbed.  I say this with a good sense of irony, too, as I find myself squarely in the pretty goddamned privileged class of people.  Part of this, I assume, is that my upbringing was squarely in the middle-class so I still identify with people hustling for their dinner rather than with people who are eating in fine restaurants.  I believe that the staff was treated OK by most of the passengers.  I also surmise that they were faceless servants to many people.  "Give me a piece of pie, please."  That kind of thing.  They were looked through.  

Most of the staff were young - they worked hard and for long hours - and most of them were from disadvantaged countries.  SuperK and I nourished relationships with some of these kids.  They all wore name tags that gave their first name and the country they call home.  Most of them are bright and educated but are unable to find suitable employment in their struggling home economies.  For instance, my table was often cleared by a young man from the Ukraine who has an engineering degree.  I'm going to look down on that guy?

SuperK pays me the compliment of having the ability to draw people out.  There were three friends from Kyrgyzstan who worked the stations of the restaurant we favored.  Kyrgyzstan!  Are you kidding me?  I could tell at the start that they were pretty reticent and shy about telling me about their lives but I always took a stroll down the serving line, caught their eye, engaged them if they weren't helping anyone.  After a while I could see their faces light up when they saw me coming.  They started calling me Mr Steve and they started opening up, telling me about their lives when they had a minute.  I'm not going to lie, either - it's pleasing at my age to get a big smile from a young woman.

I think about being of service and what that means.  I think about how I complicate everything, how it has to be big and extravagant or I can't be bothered.  Pshaw.  Yesterday I got an email from one of the women.  She asked if we still remembered her and even attached some pictures from the ship in case we had forgotten who she was.  I assured her that we had literally thought of them every day since we got home (we are FB friends with one of them so get to follow their progress around the world, and that helps).

This shows me that we made a difference in someone else's life.  We're remembered.  It confirms our suspicions that most people treat the staff as disposable, interchangeable servants.  It's no more difficult than that.

Here and There

"He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love."

Here's an interesting fun fact: "love" appears 58 times in the BB and 12&12.  "Hate" appears 4 times.  Those kooky founders knew what they were doing.

Here's a repeat of another fun fact: love has a short definition that really falls flat - very bland and non-descriptive - while hate is richly detailed with many, many synonyms.  Maybe it's like Bedouins having dozens of ways to describe a sandstorm but none for blizzard.

One more: whenever a word is capitalized in The Big Book that's a hint that the founders were talking about a Higher Power.

A Buddhist flight of fancy . . . 
Don't fight negative thoughts.  Don't try to suppress anxiety.  Acknowledge them as dispassionately as possible and then move your awareness back to the positive.  The last thing that's going to be helpful to do is to try to control your feelings.  I think the idea is to experience them without judgment, to stop slotting them into good and bad.  They're just feelings.  They're not you.

Always Be Learning

Learn:  To gain knowledge from a bad experience so as to improve.

Improve, schmimprove. 

There's a guy who has been showing up at our morning meeting with all of his belongings in a backpack.  He alleges a ton of sobriety which I know because he also talks at length at every meeting.  As you know - this earns you an automatic spot on my Shit List.  I wouldn't call his message incomprehensible but I would put it in the hard to follow category.  He doesn't really have any place to go after the meeting so he stands around outside and inserts himself into different conversations.  The problem is that his conversational skills are restricted to talking about himself.  I try to be patient with the less than capable but I'm also at the meeting to take care of myself.

 A good friend that I don't get to see too often suggested a cup of coffee at the little shop right across the street not long after I had just returned from our long vacation.  We got our cups and sat down outside.  This dude wandered over and pulled up a chair, introduced himself, and then launched into a long story about something or the other, inserting a comment about how great it would be if he could get some part time work to earn the $40 to get his phone turned on again.  We both listened to him for a period of time that I would call Sufficient before I asked a question that was clearly directed at my friend.  This worked for a short while but during a brief pause the dude started up again.  We listened and then I did my interrupt thing again.  The guy hung in there for a moment before standing up and strolling away.

"Was I rude?"  I asked my buddy.

He paused.  For quite a while which was a partial answer in itself.

"No," he said.  "He made the play for the money and then moved on."

I'm not so sure I wasn't rude.  I'm also aware that it can be difficult handling folks that aren't playing with a full deck.  I want him to feel welcome but I also need to take care of myself.  A saner man might have asked to join us or listened in on our conversation.