Not An Easy Choice My Ass

"To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternative to face.  If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago.  But our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly."

I've always loved the mental construct of what happens when you tell an new person that they have two choices: To continue drinking and using, living a painful and remorseful life, before ending up  in an institution or a grave, or accepting a spiritual solution to the alcoholic problem, and then watching the individual struggle to make a decision.  "Uh, can I get back to you on that?  The answer isn't clear at the moment."   Jeeee-zus H. Christ, are you kidding me?

Waddling Down the Quay

As you might expect from a legendary and life-altering trip memories and reflections on my time in the African and Asian developing world bubble to the surface at odd and unexpected moments.  I continue to be struck by these two thoughts: 1. Man, were the people in these places great - happy, resigned in a dignified way, eager to please, and 2. Man, do we have it good here in the developed world.  You know how you can take your good health for granted and then you get sick and feel like shit for a while and when you recover it feels great to just not be sick and you think: "Man, why do I take my robust health for granted?  I'm going to stop doing that." and then you stop doing it anyway?  

I mused today about a port we visited in Malaysia.  To reach the tour buses the passengers had to walk down a long jetty passing a restaurant and some shops along the way.  Hundreds of passengers.  On the way back to the ship after our tour we stopped at the outdoor restaurant for a coffee and the legendary hookah experience.  I could have had a free coffee on the ship and some free canapes or appetizers or crudites or finger foods or whatever the fuck they served us and I could have avoided the always somewhat uncomfortable experience of navigating the ins and outs of a restaurant in a foreign country: how do you order, how do you pay, does anyone speak English, am I going to eat/drink something bilious that will lead to projectile vomiting, those sorts of thoughts.  We stopped and had a wonderful, wonderful cultural experience, highlighted by the attention paid us by our bright-eyed and amazed child-waiter from Pakistan, who absolutely wallowed in the attention we paid him, clearly eager to interact with us but nervous about his English skills and wondering what level of dismissive we might be as wealthy Westerners.  His boss, a mildly racist Indian, sat with us for a while.  I didn't know what anything cost beforehand and was, of course, amazed at how little the bill came to, as I tipped like one hundred percent because the bill was so ridiculously small.

Here's the most striking fact of this encounter: we literally watched dozens and dozens and scores and hundreds of cruisers walk by and no one else stopped.  No one.  Not a single person.  I don't know how I interpret this: fear of a cultural encounter, arrogance about their place in the world, a desire to save a few dollars by eating the safe, paid-for ship fare in a safe, comfortable, familiar setting?  To me they missed the whole point of being in a foreign place by waddling from a cushy ship to a cushy tour bus to a curated tour and they back again.

The Taking and the Giving

"We cannot see everything from beginning to end.  Life is too large to see that far.  Sometimes it seems we have to give more than we receive.  We sometimes have to reach beyond what we really want to do, or take part of someone else's load rather than see them break down.  We may lose sight of God, but God never loses sight of us.  The scales balance out and we see that we cannot get less than we give when the gift is our best.  It is impossible.  We cannot love more than we are loved."

More crossover from another spiritual source.  It's all so connected.  I often feel put upon by life, that I'm getting SCREWED, that it's all unfair.  Pffffftttt.  I'm just lucky I don't get what I deserve.

Silence is Golden

Here's my acid test for speaking to someone else and this is especially salient when I disapprove of this individual's behavior:

Does it need to be said?

Does it need to be said by me?

Does it need to be said right now?

I mentioned this friend who seems to be overly preoccupied with women.  I thought long and hard about how I could broach this subject with him without violating the tenents of my most important personal codes: Stay the fuck out of everyone else's business.  With many of my insignificant and minor conundrums I ask my god to help me act if and when such a time arrived and, otherwise, keep my trap shut.  Usually, this time never presents itself, validating another of my personal codes: No one wants your opinion.  Consequently, not saying anything is often the wisest thing I can do.  So I get my jacket out of my car on Saturday and we don't even get across the street before he starts quipping on the topic.  You know .  . . sometimes the message about what I should  do comes in loud and clear.

"What could be more tiring that seeing ourselves in whatever direction we turned?  If we had nothing to challenge our views, would we ever think more deeply, rise higher?  It is not our  differences that make the difficulty in the world but our prejudices against difference."  Cherokee Lady

I get this.  I surrounded myself with other dysfunctional people to mask my own dysfunction.  I enjoyed bitching with these ne'er-do-wells about how The System was screwing us, how The Man was out to get us.  I didn't have a Voice of Reason saying something along the lines of "Fuck you talkin' about?"  or "Fuck's the matter with you?"  Trenchant wisdom along those lines.

Insanity

Some passages from More About Alcoholism:

"I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk.  I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart."

"Parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink."

"Our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened."

Insane:  Exhibiting a severely disordered state of mind; mentally deranged; very stupid, crazy or dangerous.

Are you picking up on a theme here?  Crazy behavior.  I vaguely sensed I was being none too smart when I got into my car to drive home from the bar where I had twelve beers.  That kind of thing.

Fire!

I can usually find some commonality with everyone I meet.  I can almost always find this with an alcoholic, recovering or not.  And then there is that subset of people with whom I share a scary amount of emotional genetic DNA.  These are the people that I feel like I can help the most.  These are the people with whom I can share parts of my self that I believe will really resonate.  These are the people who teach me the most about myself.

I have a young friend in my meeting who burns energy like a mouse on meth.  Tries to accomplish way too much way too fast.  While I admire the get-up-and-go I shake my head at the agita that this need-for-speed can produce.  I'm in that subset of people who do a lot and berate myself for not doing more.  I'm not even sure what I'm trying to accomplish at this point.  I'm fucking retired for chrissake.  In one of my journals I have a long English to graduate students, for chrissake.

BTW, agita was one of those words.  See how I snuck in it this morning?  Angst would have worked just fine and it's a word that's much more recognizable.  Am I pushing myself to learn or am I trying to sound smarter than I think I am?  Whatever.

I've always loved the fire analogy.  Fire is elemental and is neither good or bad.  It's fire.  It doesn't have a personality.  You can light ten candles and the fire is exactly the same in each candle.  You can use the fire to cook your food, heat your house, and take a nice, warm shower.  You can also scorch all the skin off your face, burn your house to the ground, and reduce everything in the Pacific Palisades to smoldering rubble.  Same fire.  The scorching fire isn't bad and the warm-shower fire isn't good.  It's how I apply it.  

It's the same thing with my high personal motor.  I can get a lot done and I can make myself neurotic by berating my shortcomings.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

She asked me why.

So I went ahead and told her.   R.L. Burnside

I cannot turn my face away from the concept that wisdom is experience plus knowledge.  I was always pretty good with the knowledge part of things while woefully lacking in the experience part of things.  Or perhaps I should say grasping and digesting the experience part of things.  I would eagerly learn about something and then ignore the lesson until I had punished or rewarded myself with the consequences.  Even that was not enough some of the time as evidenced by the repeated beatings I administered to myself.