Pitiful and Incomprehensible Demoralization

"You cannot see the future.  It's a blessing that you cannot.  You could not bear to know all the future.  That is why God only reveals it to you day by day."

Future:  The time ahead; those moments yet to be experienced.

Past:  The period of time that has already happened.

I've always liked the use of the word "cannot."  Doesn't it sound a lot weightier than "can't?"  "You canNOT believe that I'm interested in what you're talking about."  It has a commanding tone.  I also like adding "at all" to my sentences.  It is also weighty.  "You do not interest me AT ALL."  See the power there?  There's no chance that you can misinterpret my intentions when I tack that "at all" onto the end of the sentence.

I think I could handle the future.  I think God is making a mistake by not allowing me to see the future.  I think God is making a big mistake by not letting me control the future.

I don't get to change the past.  I can clean up my mistakes.  I can learn from them but I can't rewrite what has happened as much as I'd like to do that from time to time.  Similarly, the future is out of my hands as much as this galls my gallbladder.  Honestly, the past is overrated.  It has been done to death.

"Your attitude toward your problems can be changed by putting yourself and your problems in God's hands and trusting him to to see that everything will turn out all right, provided you are trying to do the right thing."

Another overrated thing?  Trying to do the right thing.  Overrated.  My attitude toward my problems is just fine.

The good news is that there's a solution - the bad news is that it's us.

Demoralize:  To destroy the morale of; to dishearten.

A great line from our literature is "pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization."

Funny how service goes from being a huge, huge thing to becoming a small, simple thing.  Don't be an asshole.  Think of someone else.  Be nice.  My expectations of the world have gotten smaller and smaller as I've stayed sober.

A Proper Time

 Change of thinking . . . 

"There is a proper time for everything.  I must learn not to do things at the wrong time, that is, before I am ready or before conditions are right.  It is always a temptation to do something at once, instead of waiting until the proper time.  Timing is important.  I must learn, in the little daily situations of life, to delay action until I am sure that I am doing the right thing at the right time.  So many lives lack balance and timing.  In the momentous decisions and crises of life, they may ask God's guidance, but into the small situations of life, they rush alone."

I prefer rushing ahead.  I don't mind rushing ahead alone, either, in those many, many situations where everyone else is too stupid to see how right I am.  If I think it - so it must be.  My initial impression is the correct one.  It's always the right one.  

"We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us."

Wait?  Dammit, I want to kill something. (Two vultures, sitting in a tree, discussing patience.)

Ready!  Fire!!  Aim!!!

Existential Seaweed

 "My mind is in a box of space and time and it is so made that I cannot conceive of what is beyond space or time, the limitless and the eternal.  But I know that there must be something beyond space and time, and that something must be the limitless and eternal Power behind the universe."

For a transparently Christian-inspired morning meditation book some of the daily musings take on a surprisingly existential tone.  These flights of whimsy may be its saving grace for me, now that I think about it.  I'm really digging on this idea that a characteristic of my humanity, my humanness, is that my mind is limited in its ability to think about some matters.  It's impossible to comprehend infinity.  It's virtually impossible to understand how far across the universe is and the speed at which it continues to expand.  I'm going to resist the concept of a Higher Power?

Here's this then:

One million seconds is about 13 days.

One billion seconds is about 32 years.

One trillion seconds about 32,000 years.

One trillion dollars laid out end to end would nearly reach the sun.

It would take a jet flying at the speed of sound 14 years to unspool a roll of one trillion dollar bills.

Yet, we throw these numbers around in our daily life and don't think a thing of it.  But when it comes to the help we can receive from a more powerful force we get all agitated, dig our heels in, and refuse to budge.  I can't really understand what a trillion means and I'm going to insist that I comprehend God?  On its surface this is patently ridiculous.  And if you dig down deeper it's even more ridiculous.

When I hear people share their experiences with their own personal Jesus (Johnny Cash - lookitup) I tend to roll my eyes before I catch myself.  Who knows what's going on?  Who knows how you or me or you relate to something ineffable?  I perceived that my dead mother was communicating with me through some doves.  Willie saw his father's spirit lift out of his body when he passed.  People hear actual voices from beyond the grave.  

The scientist in me scoffs, demanding proof - the recovering alcoholic in me nods in wonder.

Piqued

"We suffer from mental conflicts from which we look for escape by drowning our problems in drink.  We try through drink to push away from the realities of life.  But alcohol does not feed, alcohol does not build, it only borrows from the future and it ultimately destroys.  We try to drown our feelings in order to escape life's realities."

"Our liquor was but a symptom.  So we had to get down to causes and conditions."  Big Book P. 64.

For the longest time I labored through the delusion that I drank to have fun.  While sometimes, especially in the early years, I did indeed have fun, I was really drinking because I was poorly suited to manage my life.  I had no interest in learning anything through pain or fear or embarrassment which are . . . you know . . . the normal ways we learn new lessons.  I just wanted the anxiety to go away.  I vaguely sensed I was being none too smart but I always managed to jam those feelings way down deep where the sun don't shine.

"I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn't seem to bother me so I tried another."

Pique:  A feeling of irritation or resentment, awakened by a social slight or injury; offence, especially taken in an emotional sense with little thought or consideration. (Ed. Note: This word is taken from Old French where it means a prick or a sting or a sharp point.)

"I must never let personal piques interfere with living the way I know God wants me to live."

Out of Sorts

 I'm out of sorts today.

Out of sorts means feeling irritable, upset or unwell.  Most commonly, the origin of the term out of sorts is attributed to typesetting.  As this theory goes, the phrase refers to the individual metal type called sorts that printers used. These sorts would be stored in their individual compartments.  If the sorts were in short supply or stored in the wrong compartments, then the printer was out of sorts.  However, the term out of sorts was recorded long before the printing press and today all type setting is done digitally, eliminating the need for physical type.

Ah, I got nothing.

Upsetting Things

"When you allow yourself to be upset over one thing, you succeed only in opening the door for the coming of hundreds of other upsetting things."

Ah, I hate that door.  Here in SoCal we have ants.  Little, tiny, thirsty ants.  If you leave a speck of food on the kitchen counter an ant will find it and then she will rush back to the nest yelling "Food!  Food!" while laying down a chemical trail so that the other trillion ants in the nest know exactly where to go.  (Ed. Note: Did you know that the foraging ants are always female?  As in most societies the males are pretty much useless.)  And lest you think that removing the food particle solves the problem I'm here to inform you that the chemical trail goes exactly nowhere so that ants will periodically show up on your counter top, weeks later, cruising aimlessly around like drunken sailors, looking for that spec of food long-gone, so that if you leave anything new around they'll inevitably stumble into that.

The moral is don't get started with the one upsetting thing.

A guy I sponsor made plans to attend the Keep It Complicated group this morning and asked if I was going to be there.  Sure.  Why not?  I'm really not mad at anyone - I'm just one of those people if I don't like a restaurant after I've eaten there I go somewhere else.  I don't call the manager - I don't write a venomous review on Yelp - I don't send the meal back.  I vote with my feet.

Continuing with the "things solve themselves without my input" riff I was tickled to see that the continuing problem with the church's internet connection was still a continuing problem so no screen for me again.  This time the screen addicts didn't even drag the screen out and fuck with it for an hour.  Simply had a good, old fashioned in person meeting.  Good energy, good flow, good, good vibrations.  I was also amused to see an attendance of about 20.  This is about half of the pre-CoVid attendance of 40 to 50 but it's a nice size - it's easy to share if you want to but it's OK if you'd like to listen for a day.

All without me pushing buttons and twisting knobs and adjusting dampers.

Problems Solve Themselves

"Intelligent faith in that Power greater than ourselves . . . has an incomparable capacity to help us look at life in balanced perspective.  We look up, around, and away from ourselves, and we see that nine out of ten things which at the moment upset us will shortly disappear.  Problems solve themselves, criticism, and unkindness vanish as though they had never been."

I've enjoyed this mental trick over the years - imagining myself drifting up and over my body and looking down at myself as sort of a disembodied spirit, watching what I'm doing and trying to imagine me in relation to the whole, wide world.  I often feel like my head is trapped in this tightly fitting box that has no openings to the outside and is covered with mirrors on the inside.  I can't hear or see anyone else and everywhere I look there I am.  I look up and there I am and I look to the side and there I am and I look down and there I am.  Me, me, me.

Fear:  A strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion that caused by actual or perceived danger or threat.  (Ed. Note: I like the inclusion of perceived in the definition - it reminds me that sometimes I'm afraid because I'm telling myself scary stories.)

Faith: The process of forming or understanding abstractions, ideas, or beliefs, without empirical evidence, experience, or observation.

Some topics that came up in the meeting today: Fear versus Faith.  It's reassuring to have other alcoholics remind me that faith often defeats fear but it's never going to banish it.  I dislike it when someone opines that any fear is a sign of a weak faith.  That's bullshit.  Life is tough and scary and we're all going to be afraid.

CoVid changing the world.