Horseface Steve or Someone Else? You Make the Call.

Plagiarize:  To take and pass off as one's own.


I enjoyed my foray into plagiarism so much I think I'll do it again.  I'm thinking of adding some of my own commentary.  I don't know why I would do this.  I don't think I can improve anything.  I can definitely make things worse.  Sometimes I like making things worse.  I'm a good crisis manager.  I'll be right back: I'm going to pick a fight with SuperK.


10 minutes later: That was a bad idea.


The essence of experience is change.  Change is incessant. 


Doesn't this all sound like AA?  Blows me away.  How about: "The only thing you have to change is everything?"  How about: "Change is inevitable?"


AA or Buddhism?  You tell me.


Anyway, we tend to categorize experiences.  It is good, or it is bad, or it is neutral.


Good things attract us so we pursue them.  We call this "grasping."  If we feel nice we do whatever we can to hold onto that feeling.  Alas, it is elusive.  It eludes us.  It goes away and then we're frustrated and unhappy.


Bad things repel us.  We call this "rejecting."  If we feel bad we do whatever we can to push the experience away.  Alas, we cannot escape bad things.  It's part of life.  Sorry.


Most things bore us.  They're tedious.  we call this "ignoring."  We ignore most of our life.  That's where most things are happening, in the time between the good things and the bad things.  It's a shame we're so cavalier with so much of our time.


The direct result of all of this lunacy is a perpetual treadmill race to nowhere, endlessly pounding after pleasure, endlessly fleeing from pain, endlessly ignoring 90 percent of our experience.

Newish

One of the things I notice most talking to people who are newish in recovery is the frenetic pace of their thinking and their actions and their desire to get somewhere important fast.  I know that I'm a case study for this kind of behavior.  I was not interested in waiting to see how things might work out, to standing stock still until I got some kind of feeling that I should move and move in a particular direction.  I think that good advice for all of us to take is: "Hey.  Relax."  Sometimes I'll ask a simple question and these people will unload for a minute or two without taking a breath.  They bring up so many topics that I could talk at length on several of them.


People who have a bit of sobriety and are still active in their step work have a much stronger sense of calmness.  I was definitely attracted to that when I first came in.  Hell, I'm attracted to that today.  It's just a feeling of . . . calmness.  It's an unhurried air.  Not a lazy, unmotivated attitude, but a calm one.

Only Human

If I was ethical I would attribute the following information to a book I'm lifting it out of, verbatim.  My meditation has been sucky so I'm rereading one of the many good books that I own and have read, then promptly forgotten about or gotten too lazy to put into practice.  Also, I have to catch up with SuperK who is beating me in the meditation competition.


You find yourself heir to an inherent unsatisfactoriness (I mean, is this even a word?  Those kooky Buddhists) in life which simply will not go away.  There is a vague awareness that something is wrong.  You are not really touching life.  You feel insulated from the sweetness of experience by some sort of sensory cotton.  You are not making it again.


There is a constant undercurrent in every thought and every perception; a little wordless voice at the back of the head that keeps saying, "Not good enough yet.  Got to have more.  Got to make it better. Got to be better."  We get stuck in the "if only" syndrome.


So what is wrong with you?  Are you a freak?  No.  You are only human.

Good Old Rocky Top, Rocky Top USA

I was out near the ocean for a couple of days this week.  The coast is not gentle here -- it's rocky and windswept -- but it's really quite beautiful.  SuperK and I did a bunch of hiking during our visit.  The area gets a tremendous amount of rain so it's as green a place as you'll ever see.  I've been in the jungles of Central and South America a few times and the vegetation here is as thick as anything I've encountered.  I like to hike in the Southwest as well, which is quite a different environment.    Here the vegetation has all of the resources it can handle, but the real estate is quite coveted.  In the desert, there's a lot of empty space for anything that wants to grow: it's the resources that are in short supply.


Anyway, I find that when I place myself in the middle of any of the wonderful natural places that exist in this country I hook up with my higher power.  I posted some pictures of this series of hikes and one of my buddies from The Old City made the comment: "How can you deny the existence of god looking at that kind of beauty?"  I think again and again of those kooky monks living in remote places, rocky promontories and tall mountain tops, and nod to myself: yeah, they knew what they were doing. 

Tidbits and Nuggets

Impatience.  The Quick-Fix.  How frustrating it is to sit and wait for discomfort to pass.


The 80% rule: I should spend 80% of my time thinking good, positive thoughts, or 80% of my time being positive and happy.  Not to suggest that the rest of the time I have free reign to wallow in self-pity and manufactured tragedy, but still.


The Theory of The Bong: when I didn't feel comfortable I could always grab some dope and go for the quick, very quick, temporary, very temporary fix.  I didn't chose to concentrate on the temporary part; I was more enamored with the quick part.  My favorite cartoon character was Quick Draw McGraw.  I'm lying there.  My favorite character is really Leghorn Foghorn, who said things such as: "You're doing a lot of choppin', but no chips are flyin',"  and "Go away, boy, ya bother me!"  He really got my attention as a newly sober guy when he exhorted me on:  "The fast ones go over your head. Ya got a hole in your glove. I keep pitchin' 'em and you keep missin' 'em! Ya gotta keep your eye on the ball!"


Having to spend some uncomfortable time because the The Quick Fix is no more.  As they told me at the start: "Boy . . I say, Boy! . .  sometimes you just have to sit there and take it."

Expectorations

Expect: To look for as due, proper, or necessary: as, some parents expect too much from their children.


The poor New City is groaning under the weight of all my expectations at the moment.  Man, can I heap expectations on just about anything.  There is no better way to be disappointed than to bury anything or anyone under a fucking mountain of expectations.


I like the definition of this word.  We think things are due to us.  We think they're necessary.  It's just and right and proper that things work out exactly the way I think they should.  It's no wonder I failed at all of my relationships and jobs in the past.  No one or no thing could withstand the pressure of all my expectations.


I like the phrase "Take it Easy."  I don't like doing the phrase "Take it Easy" but I like the theoretical concept.  I like hearing about how other people "Take it Easy."  Maybe some day I should ask them how they do it.


Naaaah.

The Dark Side

I discussed depression with a fellow member yesterday.  I'm something of an expert on depression, apparently preferring it to happiness.  There's no other explanation for why I spend so much time contemplating The Dark Side.  It's easier to feed the funk than to look on the bright side of things.  Anyway, it's always a good exercise for me to talk about how I'm feeling because I often have no idea how I'm feeling or why I'm feeling the way I am or how to look at what feelings are dominating my life at the moment.


Much of the time when I'm depressed or unhappy it's due to some overt, identifiable cause.  If SuperK is unhappy with me or I lose a job or find out that I'm sick with some awful, incurable disease (which I shouldn't even joke about), it's perfectly normal to feel some disquiet.  I know the cause of my feelings and I can do something about it, whether that's changing my behavior or learning to accept how things are.


But some of us have more systemic problems that require more than analysis.  Some of us need counseling and medication to right the listing ship.  There's nothing the matter with this.  Nobody feels guilty if they get cancer.  Sometimes our bodies go haywire or produce things we'd rather they didn't produce.  It's not our fault.