Action

I Don’t Got This

/ Tim / Leave a comment

I’ve learned a few things over the years by going to recovery meetings. And I have heard a lot of ‘suggestions’ as well. I’m going to add one more ‘suggestion’ to the pile: never say ‘I got this’, or ‘I didn’t before  but now I get it,’ or ‘I know what I’m doing now,’ or anything similar. It’s usually shared by folks with less than a year in recovery and, unfortunately, they usually stop coming to meetings and go back out.

What we have is a disease that is chronic and will never go away. I’ve learned in the rooms that I can never let down my guard. I must always be vigilant against the urge. I have heard too many people say that everything was going well and suddenly they  were slugging directly out of a bottle or sucking on a pipe and couldn’t understand what had happened; the disease happened.

Cunning, baffling, powerful. That is what we hear and it is so true. The disease of addiction is sly in its progress. It says that everything is good and you’re doing fine and that you ‘deserve’ or are ‘entitled’ to a bit of relaxation. Or it tells you that you are doing so well in the program because you’re really not an alcoholic or addict.  And down comes the cleaver: back into it again. I have learned that I can’t listen to my thoughts without the filter of my program. The second I say I’ve got this it’s like my mind opens up again to the disease.

“Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail.” Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 89

Step Twelve of our program asks us to work with others ‘intensively’. That is more than saying hi or sharing at a meeting. It is working with a sponsor or with a sponsee. It’s sitting down one on one with another in your recovery program and working the steps, deepening your knowledge and how to apply it to your own life. Working with others rewards by showing us what we need to do and by reminding us of where we came from. It keeps things fresh. And by keeping it fresh in our minds, we are reminded just how cunning, baffling and powerful this disease of addiction really is.

There is so much depth to the program. I am constantly amazed by people who have 10, 20 or 30 years in their program say at a meeting after reading some program literature that they don’t remember hearing this before. I am amazed at the comment of an old timer who had just over 50 years in recovery state at a meeting that he was still ‘just scratching the surface’ of the program.

So if I get a bit cocky at a meeting and say ‘I got this’ remind me of this blog post. I need to be constantly vigilant and living and sharing my program. Without it I am without defense against that first drug or drink. I am grateful for my program every day and I still have a lot to learn.

Easy Does It!

/ Tim / Leave a comment

When I first got to recovery I was told not try to do everything at once. This was a process that would take time and I needed time to heal. There was a lot to learn and to assimilate into my life. I wanted to my life to change but I didn’t have to do the whole program at once: there was no schedule and no test at the end. “Easy Does It,” was often said at meetings. But really what I heard was ‘do it later’.

I have always fluctuated between going at full speed or full stop. ‘Get ‘er done!’  or ‘I’ll get it later.” As time went on, I gradually slipped more into putting things off, telling myself that things would look after themselves. I got lazy, I put it off. Tomorrow would be a better day to do it. I just don’t have the energy to do that now I would say and I would pass my spare time with little accomplished.

I have always had a tendency to procrastination, of letting things be and let the ship sail where the wind might blow. Of course I complained bitterly when I didn’t arrive where I wanted to go, but ‘whatcha gonna do?’ Life is like this I thought: a series of lousy crap and something nice once in a while.

I carried these beliefs into recovery with me. I thought that my life was over and I would never enjoy life again. I didn’t understand that I needed some action in life  in order to balance my inertia. I learned that not doing anything was really a decision to let happen to me whatever came along. I was abdicating my ability to make decisions about my life. Coming into the rooms was a first step in changing the direction of my life but I had to do the work. I might not be able to control the wind but I could still steer by adjusting my sails.

I need balance in my life. I still have to fight against procrastination. I know that when I’m not doing something I need to do it’s because I fear things not turning our as I want them, not turning out perfect, of me falling short of what should be done. I know it’s all traceable back to my ego and things not going my way. So I am learning to push forward and do what I fear. Do what is beyond my comfort zone. Do it because the results will be more to my liking than if it just happens on its own. At the same time, I don’t have to do it all at once. Slow and steady is fine. I need to put one foot ahead of the other.

Easy does it Tim, but ‘do’ it!

Building Dreams

/ Tim / 2 Comments

I recently read a book that lead me to watch a documentary on the building of Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral being built in Barcelona, Spain. As I looked at the structure, the columns, the soaring spaces within and the pinnacles without I couldn’t help but wonder what might the thoughts of its creator architect, Antoni Gaudi, have been as he was dreaming it up. Did he imagine when he was first putting his pencil to paper that the building would take well over a century to complete? That he would never live to see it done? That the plans would be destroyed along the way and others would have to interpret how he intended it to look? That money would have to be raised not from within the church but from private funding in order to build it? If he had focused on that, the first shovel full of dirt wouldn’t have ever been removed. Is the end result of the cathedral, which is scheduled to be finished in 2026 going to be exactly like Gaudi envisioned? No. Along the course of construction materials had to be changed, technologies changed and innumerable things had to be reinterpreted. That doesn’t make the results any less spectacular. Even in its unfinished state, it attracts millions of visitors every year who marvel at the results of Gaudi’s vision.

It’s so easy to be negative, a pessimist, or a party-pooper. I can always look around and find things that are wrong or aren’t going well. I’m not sure why. When someone is positive and bright about the possibilities of the future there always seems to be someone who will say they ‘aren’t being realistic’. Why do we consider that the negative result of something we’re working toward is more real than the positive? Why is failure more ‘real’ than success? Why do so many people think that it’s unrealistic to have an attitude that things are going to work out?

I think it has to do with expectations. In life there are many variables and few guarantees. The pessimist loves to focus on those, the things that ‘might go wrong’, the people who will ‘let us down’, and all of the possible things that might fall short of the ‘perfect’ result. I’m coming to learn that it’s the ‘process’ that is the important part of anything we do, not the results that matter. Another way of looking at the saying: “It’s the journey not the destination that matters.” Life consists in meeting the challenges and solving the problems that we face, not lamenting that the path is uneven and rocky.

We need dreams in order to move forward. We need to focus on our visions of what can be and work toward those things. We live and work in the present to make those dreams a reality. The pessimist and the party-pooper often don’t even begin a project because the results might not be exactly as they expected they should be. Push ahead. Today’s dreams will only ever become tomorrow reality if I work toward them.