"The whole spiritual journey might be summed up as humble hope." Thomas Keating

Sunday, August 14, 2011

A life second to none

I have often thought about this phrase that we hear so often at meetings.  For years I've thought about it in terms of equality: all lives are equally sacred and equally capable of joy.  Come right down to it, that's a pretty abstract concept.

At a recent meeting I heard another take on the phrase.  I have a life second to none, meaning I don't want yours.  That, to me is concrete and a challenge.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Another benefit of addiction

There are two themes that consistently pop up at AA meeting that recently came together for me.  The first is how much time we used to spend drinking and how surprising it is to find that time freed up.  The second theme is how drinking was essentially a means of hiding from the pain of life, a way of anaesthetizing ourselves rather than dealing with the problems and joys of being human.

It was only a couple of days ago that I realized that it wasn't just drinking, the actual consumption of that gloriously deadening liquid, that allowed us to hide from life.  It was the whole package: the time spent planning our drinking, figuring out which store we could buy from today so we weren't repeating too much and tipping the clerk off to our problem, the time spent figuring out how to dispose of the bottles, even the time spent hung over ("I'm in no shape to deal with financial planning now!").  All of these thoughts and actions, all of this time, is part of the addictive behaviour of the active alcoholic.  It is all part of crawling into our holes and hiding.

Which brings up a scary thought.  What rituals, what time-wasters am I using now to hide?  We talk about time spent 'pencil-sharpening' to avoid decisions and tasks for which we can be evaluated at work.  How about the rest of life?

"May you live all the days of your life."  - Jonathan Swift

Thursday, August 4, 2011

We should be experts at "one day at a time" when we come into the program

Newcomers often balk at the idea of "one day at a time."  After all, it's a trick -- we all know we're really talking about the rest of our lives, right?  But, as a speaker at this morning's meeting said, we all drank one day at a time.  I know for me it was always "well, OK, I've had a rough day (or it's hot, or I'm thirsty) so I'll have one tonight and tomorrow I'll stop - or at least cut down."  I never thought 'Yippee, I'm going to get polluted every night for the rest of my life!!"  

It went beyond just the drink itself, too.  I knew I was screwing up my life and my future, but it was always 'this is what I'll do today; I'll deal with tomorrow when it comes.  I should have come into the program as one of the world's formost experts at living in the day and, yet, it's still a struggle.  As a former sponsor liked to say, I have a strong tendency to live in the wreckage of the future, sacrificing today's joy to my fear of tomorrow.

 


Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The need for approval destroys our capacity for happiness.

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander Thomas Merton points out that we are given all we need to be happy and yet "we are ashamed to do so. For we need one more thing than happiness: we need approval. And the need for approval destroys our capacity for happiness."

I think this is profoundly true.  I know that I daily damage my capacity for happiness by looking to the approval of others rather than to the values I actually value.  I find it especially distressing when I seek the approval of people whose values I despise and I allow the quest for that approval to make me ashamed of -- or at least embarrassed by -- the things that can make me happy.

If I were to list my addictions in order of preference, I think 'addiction to approval' would probably come in last.