A Year in a Life

January 11, 2024January 11, 2024 / Tim / 6 Comments

It’s been a long time since my last post; April I think it was. It’s not that I haven’t had the time to write. I have been writing a lot, almost daily in a journal. And now I know that it’s time for me to start writing and sharing more blog posts.

This past year has been very full.

I moved back to Canada the first week of December, 2022. Leaving my home, friends, loves of the last ten years has been so challenging. Costa Rica is indescribably beautiful in so many ways. But I knew that I needed to continue with the next part of my journey back in Ontario. Moving back in December might not have been the easiest month to move back: I had to crawl out a window on the house on Christmas morning because both doors were completely blocked half way up by snow. I survived.

I started working a full-time job, in my brother’s company. It’s the first time since 1996 that I’ve worked full-time for someone else. The ol’ nine to five, though in my case it’s 7 to 3:30, with a pay cheque every Thursday. I’ve worked for myself and on contract jobs for so many years, doing so many things that it was very strange to have a job where I could go in, do my work and leave it completely until the next morning. But this has also given me the opportunity to do so many other things on evenings and weekend.

I was blessed to be able to spend a lot of quality, though somewhat challenging time with my mother during the last ten months of her life. In 2020 some severe medical issues forced her to completely give up her independence and move into a nursing home. While I was a long way away in Costa Rica, her plight was present to me, but certainly not in the way that I could appreciate how challenging this had been for her. She went from living in her own garden apartment where she moved easily between friends and activities, driving her own car, going to meetings, dances and casinos with friends, to being unable to do so many of the basic things in life. She could no longer walk nor stand. Her life was restricted to a very nice, but small room at the home, dependent on the staff for transfers from the bed to the commode, the tub to her wheelchair. It was a bitter pill to swallow. Hard for me to see; I can imagine but little what it was like for her. I’m grateful for the time I got to spend with her, two or three afternoons or evenings a week. When she passed at the end of September, she was more than ready to move on to whatever lies beyond.

The most important change in my life was getting more involved in AA. I’ve been sober since 2011. I worked the steps with a sponsor. I went to plenty of meetings. I always had a sponsor and I sponsored others. In Costa Rica I was involved in my local AA and I worked on the committee for our yearly convention. But for probably a year before I moved back to Canada, I noticed that things in my life were not as ‘happy, joyous and free’ as they had been. Back north, I started going to a lot of meetings, seeing many old friends in the program. And the thought came to me that perhaps I could use a refresher course through the steps again myself.

That has become the understatement of my year!

I asked a young man with just over a year of continuous sobriety to sponsor me and take me through the steps. I actually thought I would be doing this young man a favour by giving him the opportunity to sponsor me. I was completely unable to see the arrogance in my thinking.

This young man has taken me through the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in a way I never knew existed. We would read paragraphs that I know I’ve read many before but would have to admit I really never ‘heard’ until that moment. Many times during our discussions, he would point out ideas and concepts that were completely foreign to me: me, the veteran AA member! I learned quickly that I needed to open my mind. The ‘Set Aside Prayer’ he asked me to write in the inside cover of my Big Book and which we prayed every time we met, was working in a way I could never have predicted. I was letting go of old ideas about what I thought I knew about the AA program and myself and was seeing greater truths.

I had no idea how much I needed what this young man has. And I’ve made sure he knows how grateful I am for the experience of continuing to work with him. The AA program I am following today is very different from the one I returned to Canada with. Not for lack of effort. I had a good man as a sponsor in Costa Rica. But I know I needed to come here to get the renewal in the program I needed. I can now see how close I was to taking another first drink.

With renewed guidance, I am working the AA program. I have a home group that knows I’m a member. I have group and now district responsibilities. I am privileged to be taking other members through the Big Book as my sponsor is taking me. And, most importantly, I have made a deeper connection to that Higher Power that I can now see has guided me to where I am today in my recovery. And for all of this, I am truly grateful.

I had no idea whatsoever what was ahead of me when my brother and sister-in-law picked me up at the airport that December evening. It’s been a year of great changes and challenges. And I have no idea what the next year might bring: I await with eagerness what lies ahead.

Back To Basics

April 12, 2023 / Tim / 1 Comment

Photo by Ekaterina Astakhova on Pexels.com

I’ve been in recovery for a good number of years, twelve to be exact. I know I have grown and changed in that time. I am not the same person that started the journey, thank heaven. And I am very grateful for how far I have come. I had tried everything I could think of before I started a twelve-step program, except start one. That was until I couldn’t come up with any more of the options that I thought ‘might’ work for me, but hadn’t. I certainly didn’t want things to stay the same as they were, and I knew I couldn’t stop on my own. So I gave it a go.

One of the first surprises after my first meeting was getting an invitation to return; I wasn’t getting many invitations at the time. And I realized that I had a lot of misconceptions about the program that I could put aside. I’m grateful that I was still open minded enough to listen. I soon started to try the suggestions I heard from other members and the literature. To my great surprise, they worked! It didn’t take long for me to understand I had finally found my ‘tribe’.

In the ensuing years I have been privileged to work with a lot of other folks in the program as well as participate in the day to day running of our local group, serving on the group executive for much of my time. I have learned a lot about myself, my relationship to others and to a Higher Power. However, as with many things, I began to tire a bit of the program. About a year ago I stepped back from the group work and took a deserved and probably needed break. I still kept up with meetings and the daily stuff like reading and meditation to maintain my sobriety, but I was sort of coasting along, enjoying life.

Then I heard someone at a meeting a couple of months back say, “If you’re coasting, you’re going down hill.”

And, I had to ask myself the question. Am I really coasting? Am ‘I’ going down hill?

The honest answer was a resounding “Yes!”

In sobriety I am granted a daily reprieve by my Higher Power, based upon my spiritual condition. And I believe that it’s not enough to just maintain the status quo, I have to work to make sure that apathy and self-satisfaction don’t take hold. Addiction is the disease that tries to tell you that you don’t have a disease. We have a saying that while you’re in a meeting, your disease is in the parking lot doing push-ups. I have to keep myself strong too. I know from working the program over the years that it has a great deal of depth and here I was just sort of swimming on the surface and not exploring its breadth and wealth.

I set my alarm clock a half an hour earlier again and started doing an early morning meditation followed by some journal writing.

Since I’m not in the same country as my sponsor right now, I figured I could use a fellow up here that I could do some more work with. I talked with a good friend who’s known me as long as I’ve been in the program and asked him to suggest someone for me. He matched me up with a great guy who is full of enthusiasm and is willing to share some time with me in discovering more about our program and how we can not just ‘do’ the steps, but ‘live’ them each and every day of our lives.

I am so enjoying the process. We’re doing a ‘back to basics’ kind of approach, focusing on the literature of our program from the beginning. This young man’s insight is amazing. I am seeing things in a fresh new light that make me feel like a newcomer again where everything is about to be discovered. His work with me is a tribute as well to the great sponsorship that he has received and his application of what he has learned in his own life. We have had many great discussions in the last month and I look forward to many more.

This also means that I need let go of my old ideas about who I am, how I am and where I am going in life. Sometimes that’s tough to do, but I do it anyway. I trust the process because I know from my own experience as well as that of others that this is a time of growth. How can I become the best version of me if I don’t let go of the old version?

You can teach an old dog new tricks, as long as the old dog is willing to leave behind what he thinks he knows and listen.

I am listening, and learning. And for that, I am very grateful.

Without a Worry

November 6, 2022November 5, 2022 / Tim / 2 Comments

We suffer more in imagination than in reality…Most of the things that we’re anxious about, that we torture ourselves about, that we dread, that we catastrophize in our head—they never actually end up happening. Sure, bad stuff does happen in life, but our nightmares are usually worse than reality. Don’t suffer unnecessarily. Don’t borrow suffering from the future.” Ryan Holiday

It’s been said that 95% of what we worry about never happens. We fret, procrastinate and hide rather than face whatever might come along. And when it finally comes to pass, we realize that it wasn’t as bad as we thought it might be. While I think it is a good idea to be prepared for the worst, we don’t have to live as if the worst has happened. How much of our time is wasted thinking about and living with the idea that things aren’t going to go my way? And there we have it, Ego putting in its two cents worth of advice: my way.

How many people live their lives in a constant dither of worrying about what is going to happen or what someone might say or think? Then the thing happens and if it does go badly then they fall into self pity and let that waste their time. And even if it goes well, they second guess and bemoan that it should have been better. How many times do we imagine a catastrophe, pre-live it in full colour detail? It happens. And then we relive it over and over for the next hours, days or weeks? Let me ask you: did you really have a bad day or was it just ten minutes that weren’t so great that you milked for pity for the next 23 hours and 50 minutes?

As much as possible I try to live in the present, the gift of now. Ego doesn’t like me this way. When I am in the present, aware and observant of what is around me, not making comments, comparisons or judgements, there is no room for Ego. Anger and resentments keep me in the past. Worry and fear keep me in the future. And they are all Ego driven: not having gotten, not getting and might not get my way. When I am living in the present, there is no my way, there is only what is, the here and now.

I think that when I am doing service for others I am in the same frame of mind. I am not thinking about what is in it for me, but how I can assist the community. When I am doing something with love, I place no conditions or expectations. And when I am grateful, I lovingly share with others what I have been given. There is no Ego in this, only the deep seated sense of contentment and fulfillment. My way has been transformed into Our way.

Do I succeed in living my life this way everyday? No. I often spectacularly fall way short of what I had hoped for. I have learned though, that this isn’t failure because I have learned something along the way. Yes, things aren’t always going to go perfectly, but I don’t have to fret and fear so much before hand that I fulfill my own expectations. It really isn’t the end of the world until it’s the end of the world. I don’t have to make my life miserable and cause suffering to others as well. It’s all in my mind anyway: there’s nothing real here, only imagination. Suffering in life really is optional. Besides, I have survived everything that has happened to me so far in life. Chances are pretty good that I am going to survive whatever happens next, and I may get a good story out of the deal!

* * *

Ryan Holiday is a modern follower of Stoic Philosophy. The Daily Stoic morning email from his website is one of three that I always read because it almost always has something that is relevant. Stoicism was never a religion, though it sounds like it could be a heresy that the Inquisition would have pursued, but an approach to living, like Taoism. Much of the writings of Greek and Roman stoics are filled with practical wisdom that we can use on a daily basis. Ryan has authored several books, Ego is the Enemy, The Obstacle is the Way along with The Daily Stoic. Check out the website if you haven’t yet done so.