Get . . . Away . . . From Me

Social:  Needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities; cooperating or growing in groups.

Individual: Single; separate; a person considered alone as opposed to belonging to a group of people.

I have had some problematic conversations with family members, friends, and fellow AA members about the shitstorm we're all living through right now.  I get it - this is a pain in the ass.  It's difficult.  It's painful.  I . . . don't . . . like . . . it  . . . either.  I also understand that whatever mental and emotional termites you have gnawing away at your serenity and peace of mind are presently boring more deeply.  They are chewing up load-bearing walls.  I find that my "restraint of tongue and pen" has been translating into "you, sir or madam, are a fucking idiot and I'm going to tell you why."  I had a testy exchange with my sister this morning - a perfectly wonderful human being - who is definitely looking at this crap from an inward looking perspective.  In my mind a self-centered "what about me?" perspective.

I did not hold my tongue.  I believe I was mostly polite and kind but I soldiered ahead, doggedly, committed to getting my point across.

Restraint:  Control or caution; reserve.

This did not go well.  You know how you can sense that someone's opinion is deeply held and firmly entrenched and you . . . are . . . not . . . going . . . to dislodge it no matter how much mental dynamite you use?  The times when you know deep down that you shut just shut your pie hole?  The funny thing is that I was going through my Gratitude List this morning and popped off a casual "how ya' doin' " email to check up on her family as we don't communicate regularly - never have.  Fifteen minutes later I'm leaving for a walk, annoyed as hell.

The other funny thing is that yesterday I wrote this big thing about love.  Yes, well, talking is easier than doing, eh wot?

We Have To Live It

"The spiritual life is not a theory - we have to live it.  So we clean house . . . asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love."  P 83 BB.

I searched the Big Book for the word "love" and was astounded how rarely it's mentioned, and usually in non-personal connotations like "loved to drink."

Love: An intense feeling of deep affection.  (Ed. Note: Weak!  Weak!  Weak definition!  Miriam Webster can't even come up with a robust definition for love.)

To continue my amusement of my daily existential battle of Problem V Solution has led me this morning to the idea of what it means to love someone or something.  In my tight-assed, buttoned-down, conservative, Lutheran, German upbringing I was led to believe that love was restricted to god, your family, and a significant other.  I never understood that it was something much larger than that.

I tell the story of a man I was helping out in sincity (and by "helping out" I mean "he was helping me out") who ended a phone call one time with a "Love you, man."  This stopped me in my tracks and frankly offended me a little bit.  He continued to sign off this way, seemingly not offended by my tight-assed silence.  Then one day he didn't say it and - guess what? - that offended me.  You see how it is with me - you're screwed if you do and you're screwed if you don't.  I can find a problem with everything.

I began to toss it out with some of best boyfriends and it felt good to do it and it was usually returned.  I started, from time to time, to sneak up behind one of them as they were waiting for the meeting to start, and gave them a big kiss on the cheek.  I haven't been decked yet.  People that see it usually love it although I did hear one tight-assed guy say: "Well, that was weird."

It has been here in California, only a few years ago, after many years of sobriety, that it occurred to me that there were a handful of women that I loved, too.  One morning before our meeting I was talking to a woman that I know fairly well.  I don't find her that interesting and we have very little in common so our conversations are pretty chit-chatty but she has been important to my sobriety so I said: "You know - I do love you."  She was so obviously tickled shitless about this that it made my day - it made my week.

I'm careful with this word with my girlfriends.  It has a ton of weight behind it and I need for everyone to understand that it comes from a special part of my heart.  I don't want anyone to misunderstand.  The idea of love can be used for selfish reasons.  I get to hear women say it to me, too.  Not a lot of them - this is not something I toss about willy-nilly.  

I have come to believe that love is something with all kinds of different levels and intensities.  I love people differently.  My feelings can ebb and flow but love is love.  There are guys that I have had words with but that I still love.  It doesn't go away - it changes, it metamorphisizes, it migrates.

Don't tell anyone I'm talking like this.  I have a big-city, east-coast, look-of-irritation, sarcastic reputation to uphold.

Loosely Losing

Simplify:  Make something easier to do or understand.

As I doggedly search for the good in everything I've come up with some mini-donut gems during the pandemic and Hostess mini-donuts, fresh ones, not some off-brand mini-donut that has been sitting on the shelf at Wal-Mart or a discount food broker.  I've come up with more than I would have imagined.  For me, the lack of different activities that I can obsessively engage in has turned out to be a real blessing.  I don't feel like I'm always leaving something undone so it allows me to more deeply enjoy whatever I'm doing.  I don't have to rush through anything to get to the next thing because I don't have enough next things to fill up my day.  My morning Quiet Times are robust right now - I'm not sitting down with my eye on the clock, aware that there are four or five things queued up on my schedule.  I can let my mind idly, drift, explore.  It has been remarkably pleasant.  Peaceful.

I'm reminded of our great Ohio to Oregon decampment.  We had a three story house with a full basement and there was Stuff in every room.  Neither of us are pack-rats - there were no piles of tuna fish cans or flattened cereal boxes - but it was too easy to take something that we didn't use or need anymore and put it somewhere.  So when we started to shed things for the big cross-country move my emotions whipsawed between pain and relief.  It was freeing to lose the weight of the Stuff even as I worried that I might need the particular piece of Stuff I was currently shedding, the old piece of furniture, the coat that was a little too small, the electric shrub trimmer I had to trim shrubs I no longer had.  Of course, we shed the easiest things first and these were easier to do but as we got deeper into the piles the items became more potentially useful or had more significant memories.  We got rid of a shitload of stuff only to find that we humped about 70% too much stuff with us.

Stuff:  v.  Force or cram (something) into a receptacle or space. 
            n.  Matter, material, articles, or activities of a specified or indeterminate kind that are being referred to, indicated, or applied.

It takes currency - both the cash money kind and, more insidiously, the  emotional currency kind - to manage and maintain and control Stuff.  I'm glad to be rid of it.  I rarely think: "Boy, that piece of Stuff would really come in handy right now."  We sold a few things but mostly pitched Stuff or gave it away.  I had thousands of dollars of high end audio equipment that had been replaced with small electronic devices.  This Stuff is of no interest to anyone under 40 and of little interest to anyone older, most of whom were also sitting on tons of unused audio equipment.  It was weird and a little unsettling to jettison things that had cost so much money and been the source of so much pleasure but if I still had it there would be unopened boxes, moldering in my shed right now, comfy homes for mice and such. 

Isn't this the Buddhist way?  Letting go of . . . everything?  Losing attachments, longing, possessing?


Good riddance, Stuff.

Bewildered Seaweed

Solution: An act, plan or other means, used or proposed, to solve a problem.

Here's an old Chinese proverb about heaven and hell . . .   Maybe it's Japanese.  It could be pretty new, too.  I saw it referenced on The Simpson's so it's probably total bullshit.

A big group of friends and family are seated around a dinner table heaped with steaming, delicious food.  Everyone's hungry so they grab their chopsticks and start to dig in, only to find that the chopsticks are six feet long and they can't get the food anywhere near their mouths.  They're in hell.

Each friend picks up a piece of food and aims it at the mouth of someone across the table who is conveniently six feet away.  Plenty of accessible food for everyone and the party's on.  They're in heaven.

Same place, same table, same circumstances, different outcome.  So am I looking for the solution today or am I looking for the problem?  I'm joking, of course - I'm looking for the problem.  You can do whatever you want.

I confess that initially, when confronting the problem, I thought: Why don't they just pick up the food with their hands?  Or break the chopsticks so they're shorter.  Or get some fucking flatware, for chrissake.  Who came up with the idea of eating food with two flimsy sticks?  The German in me is always looking for a solution to a problem.

True fact: when the first Europeans came to Asia and ate with forks and knives the locals were astounded: "These idiots are barbarians - they're eating with their weapons!"  A knife was used to skewer an enemy, not your moo goo gai pan.

Sing me a song, you're a singer.
Do me a wrong, you're a bringer of evil.
The devil is never a maker, 
The less that you give you're a taker.
So it's on and on and on.
It's heaven and hell.
Thomas Carlyle - 18th Century British philosopher.

It's bad luck to kill a seabird.  They carry the souls of men and women who have been lost at sea.

The lesson?  Don't kill so many seabirds.

Bedevilment:  To harass or cause trouble for; to plague.

"We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people . . . "

Dude who led the meeting this morning read this section right out of the Big Book.  And who would want to give all of that referenced stuff up?  It sounds like a magical way of living.  This section - in To The Agnostics - serves as a nice counterpoint to The Promises.  While we spend more time on What It's Like Now, on The Solution, it is good to keep a watchful eye on What It Was Like, on The Problems that brought us down.  I need to say every now and then: "Oh, yeah, right - that was a fucking miserable existence."

I think tomorrow I'm going to use the nickname Bedevilment Steve.  I was leaning toward Bewildered Steve but this one is in the lead.

Off The List!

I have an ever-evolving contact list on my phone.  It's subject to a constant winnowing and adjusting.  The process can be brutal.  As a general rule I have no tolerance for most people but when I'm calling these people voluntarily, of my own free will, there are some general rules that must be adhered to.  I'm not saying they're good rules or that they're rules you should have, rather that they're my rules and they rule.  If you violate the rules you are subject to ejection.  You are purged from my phone.  It's as if you've never existed, that you have never walked on the face of the earth.  There is no record of you.  No one remembers.  No one cares.  You will be forgotten.

Don't take it personally, either - people better than you have been ejected and they have been ejected more quickly than you have.  There are people about who I'm conflicted - they can be ejected and then reappear, sometimes multiple times.  There are people on my phone list that I can't stand but they remain because they adhere to the rules and there are people I love who violate the rules, so . . . off they go.  Banished.  Gone.  Vanished.

To Thine Own Self Be True.

The main rule, rule number one, is simply that you return my phone call.  Is that too much to ask? You are forgiven once.  Everyone makes a mistake, lets something slip their mind, gets distracted or too busy, but if you don't call back after a second message you're off the list.  Period.  No exceptions.  I spent my whole career calling people who often didn't call back so I'm not putting up with that shit in my retirement.  I don't mean to suggest I do this sullenly, either, but rather with the greatest good cheer.  No hard feelings on my end.  Lots of people don't enjoy talking on the phone or they're too busy to chat idly or - god forbid, horror of horrors - they don't want to talk to me.  I don't take it personally.  I don't like the sound of my own voice half the time.  I still like most of these people and still enjoy talking to them in person or even chatting via the gutless, cowardly text message.

Come to think of it I'm not sure there are any other rules.  Really, that's the only one.  We're all adults here.  It's part of the social contract that adheres to us adults to return phone calls.  If the phone relationship is not to be I'll pick up on that quickly.  I'm not selling anything.  I don't have a garage full of vacuum cleaners or nutritional supplements.  I don't take it personally.  When people don't appreciate my calls I can hear it and I quit calling.  I've got tons of people to call.  And I understand people can be busy, very busy.  If you're that busy just shoot me a text or an email telling me that you're too busy to talk.  Cool.  I get it.  No hard feelings.

SuperK: "And you wonder why you don't have many sponsees . . . "

Of The Written Transcript

Insanity:  Exhibiting unsoundness or disorder of mind.

". . . could restore me to sanity."  I always resented the fact that Bill snuck that part about insanity right in at the very end of Step Two.  In fact, that last paragraph is the only mention of insanity in the entire Step.  There is a robust, detailed discussion of all of the ways that people can lose faith or reject faith or criticize people of faith and then . . . boom . . . oh, yeah, you're crazy.  I think I was a couple of years sober before I realized that I was being termed a lunatic despite all of the evidence of lunatic behavior.  He really slipped that in there at the last minute when we're all tired of reading and not paying close attention.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

I laugh when I recall the first time I took one of those twenty-five question surveys that help you decide whether or not you have a drinking problem.  I had like fourteen positives (and this was with some robust lying) and thought: "Hey, that's not too bad" only to find out if you answered yes to two or three of them you probably had a problem.

If you want to suppress attendance at a meeting read out of one the books.  If a sponsee is annoying you give them some work to do.  Preferably a writing assignment or some annoying service work.  That will focus the calls on what matters.

D'oh!

There's a guy I met when he came back into The Program after tossing ten years of sobriety down the spit sink to work on his lead.  I like the guy but I was talking to someone who was lurking around the outer ridges of sanity.  He wasn't a lock-me-up-now lunatic but his thinking - and then his actions - were not symptomatic of an ordered mind.

I listened politely for a while and then I wasn't so polite.  Eventually, I became downright rude.  I like this guy and he knows this so he understood that my blunt comments came from a good place.  But . . . I mean . . . if you would read a written transcript (Ed. Note:  A transcript is by definition "written" so I'm trying to sound smarter than I am by adding an extra word.) you'd wonder why this guy hasn't popped me in the nose.

I think you can start to tell when someone is ready to get sober.  They quit arguing.  They start listening and they start pondering all kinds of advice instead of rejecting it outright.  In my case if it isn't my idea I'm not going to do it.  My friend - who talks to lots of people - is really rolling right now.  He was willing to give something new a shot.