Statue of Limitations

"Parents teach only what they know to teach.  But we are not set forever in one direction.  We reach an age when we must teach ourselves.  We learn to forgive and to understand that when we get to the fork in the road we'll know the right way.  If our self-esteem has been damaged, feeding it more pity and more ill-treatment is not healing it."

The statute of limitations on blaming your parents for anything is 30.  I will admit that at one point I thought the phrase was "statue of limitations."  Like there's a statue somewhere of a mythological being called Limitations.  There are statues of Beauty and Wisdom and Youth so I just figured somewhere someone thought Limitations needed its own statue.  Not sure what it would look like.  Maybe it would half-finished.

"Remember that when you do anything, there will be someone that will find fault, no matter what you do.  The pleasure of an unhappy person is to find something wrong in others to salve his own discontent.  We all try to understand our differences of opinion, to care what effect we cause in other people.  But the bane of anyone's existence is ignorance of our own faults.  So what we find wrong in others may be a reflection of our own wrongs."

I was asked to lead the meeting this morning so I read from Step Eleven in the 12&12: "There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer.  Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit.  But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life."  I believe that prayer - talking, basically, a talent at which most alcoholics excel - is developed early in our recovery and that we're hammered into submission by sponsors and old-timers to quit looking for solutions to our problems outside of our own selves and to relentlessly, relentlessly examine our insides to see how we can improve ourselves.  After all, the outside world is just fine and none of our business - the inside world is where we need to focus.  

Meditation is a little trickier.  We want to know exactly how to do it and how to measure our progress.  We want to be excellent meditators and we want to get it over with.  It's not a Fourth Step.  It's not an amend.  It's not competitive meditation.  It's a part of Step Eleven - one of the three maintenance Steps - which can be started immediately and should be started immediately.  Here's the Book again: "Meditation is something that can always be further developed.  It has no boundaries, either of width or height.  Aided by such instruction and example as we can find, it is essentially an individual adventure, something which each one of us works out in his own way."  There's a lot of slop room there.  We can also get better at it as time passes and we practice continually.  It's an individual exercise that has no right or wrong way.  And - I love how Alcoholics Anonymous repeatedly reminds us to tap into help outside of The Rooms - we're encouraged to use whatever resources we can uncover.

Worry Redux

Worry: Give way to anxiety or unease; allow one's mind to dwell on difficulties or troubles.

The meditation experience is not a competition.  There is a definite goal but there is no need to rush.  The purpose of meditation is not to deal with problems so problem-solving is a fringe benefit and should be regarded as such.  Don't think about your problems while you're meditating!  Push them aside very gently.  Don't shove them aside as if you're trying to catch a foul ball at a major league baseball game.  But take a break from all of that worrying and planning.  Repeating myself here: For several years I jotted down whatever worry was intruding at the moment into my peace.  At the end of the year I reread this list and what a load of crap.  I worried about the most implausible things and when I couldn't hork up anything implausible I returned over and over to the same tried and true worries that are always going to be part of the human condition.  Almost none of the crap that I worried about came true and when it did I was able to handle it calmly and with dignity.

Thinking About Thinking

One of my most persistent problems and greatest joys is thinking.  Boy, do I think a lot.  Boy, am I not in control of my thinking most of the time.  My mind goes and goes and then goes faster.  Well, welcome to the human condition.  Our brains are there to think and they've been running the show for a long time and they're not going to give up this prerogative without a fight.

Here's Venerable Henepola Gunaratana waxing poetic about meditation . . . (Ed. Note: My brain interrupted while I was typing that to wonder why I bother to spell his name correctly.  Who would know? I could do this: Gunaratanabobanabannana and you wouldn't know the difference.  Do you think Spell Check tried to help me out there?  Spell Check threw in the towel.  Spell Check didn't have shit.)

"Your mind will wander off constantly.  Just note the fact that you have been thinking, daydreaming, worrying, or whatever.  Gently, but firmly, without getting upset or judging yourself for straying, simply return to the simple physical sensation of the breath.  Somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy.  Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless.  However, you are not crazier than you were yesterday.  It has always been this way, and you just never noticed.  You are no crazier than everybody else around you.  The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation; they have not."

Go Quiet

One of the truly stalwart members of Keep It Complicated is a dude named Tom.  I like Tom.  Tom is a little boring.  Tom is really a lot more boring than a little boring.  Tom is a good friend but he will never be a close friend because he's just too boring.  To me.  Tom is boring to me.  Maybe everyone else thinks he's riveting but I don't care what other people think.  When we were struggling to keep Keep It Complicated afloat post-pandemic and post-rupture Tom was one of the handful of members who came to the meeting almost every day.  Tom is an early riser so he would always arrive twenty minutes early, get the coffee brewing and the chairs set up, keep the secretary company, on the small chance that a new person would show up and want to talk.  Many a morning I'd show up ten minutes after Tom to find him and the secretary the only people in the room.  The fact that our attendance is healthy today is in no small part thanks to him.  When the meeting is over Tom books immediately while I try to hang around until there's no one else there.  

Recently we were in the kitchen cleaning up when he said he found it unusual that the woman who handles the three minute timer sometimes "forgets" to set the timer set when someone she likes is sharing but is always prompt when it's someone she doesn't care for.  Personally, this 80 year old woman is doing as thankless a task as you can do for the meeting and I think half the time she just fumbles a bit getting the clock reset and started again.  Tom, naturally, always blows through the three minute alarm, often blowing through the additional one minute reminder.  I didn't argue with him, pointing out his hypocrisy and the negligible possibility that he's right about the timer - I didn't see the point.  Believe whatever you want to believe, although I did find his comment sort of petty and oblivious - it's certainly more fun criticizing the behavior of others than analyzing mine.  My opinion of him changed not at all.  Everybody gets a pass on the occasional grouch and the occasional brainstorm.

A few hours later he called and apologized.  He had a few things going on in his real life that impinged on his ability to be understanding in the meeting.  I get it.  I thanked him and complimented him on his self-awareness.  I did NOT ask him why HE doesn't have to follow the rules while everyone ELSE does.  People aren't supposed to cross-talk in meetings, either, and I do that all the time.  We all have our foibles and we all slip on our spiritual journey and we all make mistakes from time to time.

I am really intolerant of people who talk too long in meetings.  I'm not referencing those incidents where a member is in a crisis or slogging through something particularly distressing but the ones where someone is giving a blow by blow account, "I did this, then he did that, then I said this . . . " that kind of crap.  Get to the fucking point is my attitude.  That being said I understand there are members who need this kind of detailed personal accounting.  I can imagine that when I share it might get too cerebral, too intellectual, too theoretical, too . . . well . . . pedantic . . . like I'm some kind of A.A. sage or seer, an individual who is way, way too impressed with what he is saying.

Even in quiet, I can be in a frenzy.  "Quiet desperation," Thoreau called it.  True silence for me comes from directing my thought to quiet places.  When I let my mind drift toward something that could go wrong - and let's face it anything can go wrong - then my peace is stolen and my creative capacity is a clogged toilet.  So . . . what's a catastrophizer to do?  Listen to waves and flowing water and birdsong and sussurring trees.

When in doubt - go quiet.

Decision Fatigue

There is a psychological construct called Decision Fatigue which occurs after people have made a number of decisions in a short period of time.  Subsequent decisions may not be in the person's best interests because we're just tire of making decisions.  Marketing people know this and they exploit it by upselling customers to more expensive hotel rooms or rental cars or additional warranties.  We're exhausted from making decisions so we tend to make quick decisions to get the whole process over with.  Isn't this just another version of Restraint of Tongue and Pen?  When I'm tired I delay.  It's amazing how often a perfectly logical response pops into my head if I let it percolate for a few hours.

I'm in a good spot right now.  I'm flowing along with my life in good way.  I like the river analogy - if I sit for an hour and watch a river flow by I'm simultaneously seeing an unchanging tableau of water even though from moment to moment the water is changing.  I have a group of people in my life right now and I'm enjoying their company.  I'm not hanging onto all of the people I've known in the past while valuing and profiting from these relationships.  It comes and it goes.  Quick hanging on to that spot of water in the river - it's gone and new ones are coming.  And just as importantly I've really been leaning into this state of mind where I don't care what anyone thinks of me.  I'm free to be me, with all of the agony and the ecstasy that entails.  I'm letting it rip.

Focusing on my breath when I meditate is like sawing a piece of wood - I'm not going to cut a straight line if I watch the blade go up and down, back and forth.  I'm going to throw up so I pay attention to the spot where the blade meets the wood.

Fair disclosure: I don't own a saw.  SuperK won't let me anywhere near a portable device made of sharpened steel.  She knows nothing good can come from that.

The Smirk

"The mind does not stay all the time with the feeling of breath.  It goes to sounds, memories, emotions, perceptions, consciousness, and mental formations as well.  As they fade away, we let our mind return to the breath which is the home base the mind can return to from quick or long journeys to various states of mind and body.  We must remember that all these mental journeys are made within the mind itself.  Every time the mind returns to the breath, it comes back with a deeper insight into impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness.  The mind becomes more insightful from the impartial and unbiased watching of these occurrences.  Thought is an inherently complicated procedure.  By that we mean that we become trapped, wrapped up, and stuck in the thought chain.  One thought leads to another which leads to another, and another, and another, and so on.  There is a difference between being aware of a thought and thinking a thought."

I try to remember that my progression from bad to better behavior followed the path of actions, words, thoughts, and then, haltingly, on to the most difficult vector: true spiritual acceptance.  Don't act like a jerk; don't talk like a jerk; quit thinking murderous or unkind thoughts; and then, hopefully, get to a point or get near a point or get on a path going to a point so far away that you still can't see it where spiritual kindness is a part of who I am.  Hard to do.  Never.  Going.  To Get There.

At the meeting yesterday a woman I like kicked us off and I was sitting next to a woman I really like.  At one point a third woman asked to share.  She is remarkably boring; she almost always shares, adding tons of unnecessary details and blowing right through our three minute timer; and her voice has a droning, somnolent tone and cadence to it.  I can almost never listen to what she is saying.  I can't remember one time where I was impressed and inspired by what she has said.  As she started to speak the leader turned to the woman next to me and kind of smirked.  While I got it - I was so right there with her - it demonstrated to me that oh, so elusive fourth stage of acceptance, the one where my mind doesn't go to the smirk.

Never.  Going.  To Get There.

Picayune Questions

 Here's the latest on the guy I don't like who insists on walking with me . . . 

Really, he's okay and it's not that I don't like him - rather it's more of a case that I find him a little boring and if I'm given the choice between being with people or being alone I would almost always choose the quiet solitude option.  We've reached a detente on our walks - if he stops and talks with someone . . . I mean, when he stops and talks with someone . . . I continue walking, maybe making a couple of loops before heading on my way.  This is my exercise so if he wants to chat he can stop and chat.  Actually, the other day he left me hanging and apologized for leaving me hanging: "I should have said goodbye."

I've noticed that although he has shown a ton of growth in his seven years of sobriety he has a tendency to talk about other people in a disparaging, less than complimentary way and behind their backs.  He's given me the latest on one of our members who has been renting a room in his house, intimating that the guy is drinking, a possibility not confirmed by the tenant.  He talks a lot about a homeless man who just sits on the curb all day across the street from his residence (making me wonder how he knows this as it would seem to suggest that he's sitting there watching the guy sitting there).  And today he pointed out the house where another one of our members lived with the intimation that he isn't convinced she's staying sober.  The Book tells us that we shouldn't ever intimate that someone is drinking - it should always be left up to the member in question to make any statements about their behavior.

I've been noncommittal when this happens save for the occasional bromide about everyone doing the best they can and never knowing what might be going on in someone else's life that might help explain their behavior.  Today he waved me over as I passed him sitting at an outdoor table in a restaurant and complained in great detail about the rudeness of the waiter who was not explaining in enough detail all of his questions about the menu.  All of his picayune questions about the menu.  A lot of picayune questions.   A lot of unimportant, picayune questions about the menu.  The guy is having a fucking continental breakfast, for god's sake, how important is the exact composition of the fresh fruit on top of the yogurt.  It'll be a surprise, for god's sake.  I may have to say something next time he does this.  When someone is making a simple situation complicated it's hard for me to listen to the whining.  We really do create most of our own problems and if we aren't creating we're making little irritations into bigger ones with all of our nitpicking.  He reminded me of a garrulous old man bitching about the shape of the world today.

I'm telling you I'm always learning new stuff.