I'm Definitely Right

 "All we really have is now.  We have no past time and no future time.  As the saying goes: 'Yesterday is gone, forget it.  Tomorrow never comes, don't worry about it.  Today is here so get busy.'"

I was pondering the drinking coffee with LSD Tom part of my coffee shop experience yesterday.  I really shouldn't mark my friend Tom with an LSD descriptive.  In my defense I wouldn't say this to anyone but SuperK but that's a shallow and half-assed excuse that gives me license to demean someone with a condescending qualifier.  Also, in my defense, it's a pretty fucking funny nickname.

Anyway, I really like this guy.  He's a good, honest man who treats people well and is a solid father and provides good, honest financial advice to the clients of his investment business.  His big problem is that he wants to use the occasional hallucinogen to enhance his live concert experiences.  I really can't argue with his general rationale as I'd like to smoke a little heroin first thing every morning to take the edge off.  He defends his behavior by loosely interpreting the A.A. principle of "the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking" as an OK to use drugs.   He knows he drank too much so he doesn't do that anymore but the drugs?  He doesn't perceive that to be a problem.  I really can't argue with that disturbed manner of thinking, either, as a dude who has a sobriety date that falls roughly six months after he took his last drink.  You do the calculus.

I grew up in a rigorous academic environment where we were always encouraged to go to the source, to never take anything for granted, to research and research and then do some more research.  The Mother Ship for alcoholics is NY Central Office.  If you've never been in touch with them I highly recommend it - there will be a person assigned to your geographical area who will actually respond to your inquiry.  I've contacted them periodically over the years and their response is predictably anodyne, usually along the lines of "the individual (or the group, as the case may be) is free to do whatever they (it) want(s) as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else."  Another favorite comment is "anyone who says he's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous is indeed a member."

I chuckled a bit at the calculated nimbleness of LSD Tom's defense of his behavior.  There is absolutely nothing in our literature that says drug use is a sobriety disqualifier and NY absolutely refused to take a stance on whether what he was doing was copacetic or not.  "What he decides is sobriety is none of our business" was their response.  "We have no opinion whatsover about drug use - we're in the alcohol business only" followed that line of reasoning.

Tom understands what I think about drugs.  I was his sponsor for a while until he quit calling me.  I don't harangue anyone about anything but my disapproval was palpable so he probably got uncomfortable with our interchanges - my stance is if you think that drug use is an acceptable part of sobriety you should find a sponsor who also believes that.  In a funny side not he asked my sponsor if he would sponsor him - so I guess I'm out - and he preemptively brought up the drug use conundrum so maybe I taught him something.  My sponsor tried to keep a straight face as he politely declined his offer.  I've always encouraged people to bring up confusing matters as a topic at one of their regular meetings - that way you get advice from a cross-section of our membership and you don't have to rely on the maybe-flawed advice of one person.  I can assure you he hasn't done this.  I'm assuming he knows what would happen if he did.  In most things I can't say "I'm definitely right" but here's one where I'm definitely right.

Tongue-Biting Seaweed

 I was in the checkout line at the grocery store a few days ago and a week into a no-meeting run.  This is very unusual for me and was mostly a result of our stay in the desert - after some years of sobriety I'm comfortable with taking a break from meetings when I'm on vacation.  That, unfortunately and however, is an excuse and nothing more but I'm sticking with it.  I was unloading my cart - masked and, I thought, six feet from the customer in front of me - when the cashier abruptly said: "Sir, I'm going to need you to move back to the other side of your cart."  I apologized and scuttled back to the front of my cart, biting back the "I'm going to need you to go fuck yourself" comment that was right on the tip of my tongue, the part of my tongue that should be cut off.  My time in A.A. has taught me to Not Talk Most Of The Time! so I said not a word, somewhat proud of myself for controlling my speech while sheepishly realizing that my thinking still needs some work.  At a slight remove I understood that these essential workers have to deal with a steady stream of idiots and yahoos and bozos all day long so I'm more than willing to cut them some slack.  Still . . . my reaction was a telling tell of my spiritual condition at that particular moment.

Then yesterday I had coffee with a friend in The Program - his private Seaweed household nickname is LSD Bob, if that gives you an indication of my opinion of the quality of his Program - at a small one-off shop that I favor.  Everyone has masks and everyone is staying away from everyone else.  This dude walks in and shouts: "Am I ever going to get my order?"  It was jarring and an attention-grab.  When the cashier pointed out where his order was sitting he then yelled at two women who were in his way: "Can you get out of my way so I can get my food?"  The exchange continued for a while longer - a gripe about his coffees which were clearly right there, a bitch about a coffee carrier, etc.  At this point most of us were starting to laugh at this guy because he was so over the top.  When he finally left, hollering a "I don't want to make you do any work" a big round of applause went up when the owner said: "Have a nice day, sir, and don't hurry back."  The benefits of being the owner - a Starbucks barista would have had to bit his or her tongue until it bled.

The point is . . . if you're still at all interested in the point . . . that I could see how maybe the customer two people in front of me at the grocery store had treated that employee in a similar manner.  It's not all about me and how things are going for me.  My tongue-biting was a way of saying: "Hey, this is a tough, challenging time for all of us so I'm going to cut you some slack and this for some behavior that was maybe, possibly, a teeny, tiny bit unpleasant."

Re: my Higher Power: "And I get strength from that Power to do what I could never do with my own strength."

Some more: "Withdraw into the calm of communion with God.  Rest in that calm and peace.  When the soul finds its home of rest in God, then it is that real life begins.  Only when you are calm and serene can you do good work.  Emotional upsets make you useless."

Problem People

Endure:  To continue or carry on, despite obstacles or hardships; to persist. 

One of my friends called up to ask me to lead a men's stag meeting this week.  Although we're close we don't talk on the phone very often so when I heard his voice on my VM I assumed he wanted something.  Just to be a prick I didn't let him get a word in edge-wise when we finally spoke because I knew he was looking for an opening to make his request.  He knows me well enough to understand what was going on so this was all in good fun.  It's always an honor to be asked to lead a meeting beforehand - I take it as a compliment that I have something he thinks the group would enjoy hearing.

I'm going to talk about acceptance.  I'm going to reference in an oblique way the suck year we've all had to put up with.  While some of us have had it harder than others - and I personally have been remarkably blessed - I haven't run into anyone who has preferred living through a pandemic to life as it existed before.

Accept:  To endure patiently; to accept with gratitude.

I like the tension between these two definitions of gratitude.  The first part is what I perceive as the standard A.A. interpretation - to put up with something that's unwanted: To endure a trail or tribulation.  The second part is crucial for me as it makes me look at acceptance as something positive: To accept a gift or a promotion or a compliment.  One of the most important factors in my long history in recovery has been how to go from The Problem to the Solution.  We do that.  We don't pretend that problems don't exist for that is exactly the kind of behavior we preferred when we were drinking - sticking our heads in the sand - but we try to move quickly into a state of acceptance and gratitude.  To me this is the definition of Grace.

Our fascination with difficulties is mostly human nature, in my humble opinion.  I note with amusement that the words problem or problems are mentioned 158 times in the A.A. texts while solution or solutions are used 21.  Clearly the founders knew we were Problem People.  How do I know?  They fucking said so: "We have been talking about problems because we are problem people who have found a way up and out . . . "

Note to self: Problem People would be an excellent name for a hard rock band.

When a problem arose in my childhood I had a father who got angry and a mother who pretended that the problem didn't exist.  Is there any wonder that I'm not very good at dealing with difficulties?  I had mildly dysfunctional teachers.

Sometimes Quickly, Sometimes Slowly

 From my Daily Meditation Book:

"You can become a channel for God's spirit to flow through you and into the lives of others.  Let your spirit be in harmony with God's spirit and there is no limit to what you can do in the realm of human relationships."

I like this idea that I can be of service to other people by allowing the spirit of my Higher Power to move through me - from the ethereal plane to the material one - and into the lives of the others.  It gives me a feeling that the presence of a Higher Power in my life can benefit others by changing me for the better.  This seems more in the spirit of service and giving than just taking this presence and improving my own circumstances.

" If you look back over God's guidance, you will see that his leading has been very gradual . . . "  

In A.A. - speak we say" sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly."  I went to a men's meeting once where the group chanted this addendum: "Sometimes real fucking slowly."  The message is that it's best to slow down.  Time takes time.  The Big Book reminds us that "A whole lifetime geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse all at once."  Your path is there even if you can't see it at the moment.  Step forward into your day - steadily, slowly - and you'll gradually begin to see what you need to do.

Simplicity

 From Hazelden's 24 Hour A Day book: "Simplicity is the keynote of a good life.  Choose the simple things always.  Life can be complicated if you let it be so.  You can be swamped by difficulties if you let them take up too much of your time.  Every difficulty can be either solved or ignored and something better substituted for it.  Love the simple things.  Your standard must never be the world's standard of wealth and power."

This passage amused me because SuperK and I had been talking yesterday about this particular daily meditation book, one which was read before every meeting in Chicago when we were getting sober, even though it's not an A.A. approved text and is full of pretty Christian sounding thinking.  I picked it up a few weeks ago after I had finished another spiritual book I had been reading - also a non-A.A. approved book, come to think of it.  We had been kicking around some thinking about social media and how it can insidiously trick us into comparing ourselves to other people all of the time.  This is bad enough but the real evil is that we're often comparing ourselves to highly curated and manipulated images of other people presenting the picture to the world that they want the world to see.  No one posts a picture on Facebook of themselves morosely sitting on a couch, depressed, wearing a sweat shirt with pizza stains on it.  We're dressed up, hair combed, big smiles on our faces, doing really fun and cool things.   

BTW - I hate all of those big toothy, fake, overly joyous smiles I see when people post pictures of themselves.  I don't run into everyone walking around with those big deceptions plastered on their faces when I'm out in public.  Isn't anyone ever sad?  Doesn't anyone just have a normal scowling grimace to present to the world?  You cannot be that fucking happy all the time.  It looks so transparently fake to me.  Yeah, I know your folks shelled out $7500 for braces when you were growing up.  Maybe you should post the occasional picture of yourself cleaning the toilet or picking up your dog's dog poop or any other feces related activity that you think would hold our attention.

This bit of spiritual advice was funny because my wife inadvertently opened up the Facebook page of a sibling with whom she has a strained relationship.  And there she was, the oldest child overextending herself in a manner than I - as an in-law and not as a member of the nuclear family - find to be stressful.  This woman is obviously one of those people who had the Do part of living down pat while completely ignoring the Be part.  And SuperK's reaction is to feel 

The Desert

Another great hiking trip to The Desert.  I don't know what it is about the desert but I really like being in the desert.  I think part of it is that there are no people around and when I say no people I mean NO people.  Some of the hiking takes us up onto ridges and into hills where we can see evidence of the existence of people - houses, cars, roads - but we're too high to see the people themselves and some of the hikes go back into canyons where there are just no people.  I couldn't live in that kind of environment permanently but it's sure nice to visit from time to time.   I don't realize on a day to day basis how accustomed I am to the background hum and racket of people so it's a little jarring when I'm away from it - just the scuff of boots on rock and sand and the blowing of wind.  Some occasional birds but not that many of them.  SuperK and I talk some but often we just hike.  It's nice to be alone.  It's nice to be with people, too, but being alone is good for the soul.

I Made A Mistake? I Don't Think So

The concept of loving people for who they are and not for who I want them to be has really been percolating through my frontal cortex lately.  And why would I want it to be any different?  This attitude toward life allows me the leeway to have all kinds of unpleasant emotions and reactions to other people - friends, family, loved ones, casual acquaintances, coworkers  - without the consequence of rejecting them as people.  You don't believe the way I do?  So what.  You irritate the shit out of me from time to time?  Good for you.  Just because I occasionally have an unpleasant reaction to you as a person doesn't mean I can't allow you to be a presence in my life.

I have a friend from high school - high school! - who has been one of my dearest and closest friends for 45 years and with whom I argue and bicker all the time.  I love engaging with him even though he annoys the hell out of me about 70% of the time.  Our friendship is constant and enduring but if I sent you a transcript of some of our conversations you might be tempted to think otherwise.  I cherish these differences.  They're good for me.  They make me stretch and grow and consider all kinds of matters from a different perspective.  And they're a kind of mental combat which sharpens my wit and makes me engage in the world differently than I would if I were simply hanging around people who thought as I do.

I think it's a wonderful thing to be in conflict with others from time to time and not have a relationship be ruined.  It enlarges my being.  It allows me to make mistakes in my people skills with no long-term consequences and it makes me allow mistakes in others.  I get to say: "Hmmm.  Maybe he made a mistake.  Maybe it was me was wrong.  Hmmm."