Living in Hope

September 4, 2017September 2, 2017 / Tim / Leave a comment

The topic of expectations has come up quite a lot in meetings of late. What are expectations and how are they a problem? As a fellow member shared, “Expectation are resentments under construction”. When I expect something to happen and it doesn’t, then I open myself to anger in this moment and resentment in my future. Expectations carry with them a sense of the expected: this thing is going to happen. I have this expectation because of past experience. I did this in the past and that was the result. I am doing the same thing now so the result will be the same. There’s a sense of entitlement to what should happen. I am living in the future.

When I live with expectation, I open myself up to possible anger and resentment because I believe that this will definitely occur in the same way that day follows night. If it doesn’t, or if it does happen, but not in the way I was ‘expecting’ it to happen, then I feel let down, confused, and perhaps, angry. Expectation is inflexible and unvarying. It’s the ‘my way or the highway’ position. I need to remember when dealing with people that this world is not a scientific laboratory. Yes, when I put oxygen and hydrogen in certain amounts and under certain conditions I can expect to get water. When I am dealing with persons, places or things, the precision of a lab experiment is lost. I cannot account for all of the conditions and variables.

Let’s look at a concrete example. I say to my partner, “I love you.” If I am in expectation mode, I already have a response in mind. I expect my partner to say something like, “I love you too.” I have said I love you to this person before, or I have said this to other people and that is the response I received. Anything less than that response could be potentially shattering to the relationship: I question myself, I question my feelings, I wonder about who my partner is loving if not me! Suddenly, instead of an intimate moment, I am questioning my whole relationship with this person. How quickly I can change my perspective when I live with expectation.

Hope is the alternative to expectation. If I have hope, there is a desire for an outcome, but there is no guarantee that it will happen as I would like it. Unlike expectation, hope allows for variance of the outcome. It doesn’t have to be perfect for me to find contentment. Hope is flexible and allows the unpredictable to happen. When I have a hope realized, I am grateful. I wasn’t anticipating that outcome to occur, so anything that comes from that is pure bonus. In hope, I am living in the moment not in the future. I am happy.

Looking at our example above. If I say, “I love you,” in hope, then any response is acceptable, including no response. I know there is no guarantee that the other person will give me an ‘I love you too’ back. If I get that, well, wow! The response may be a deep passionate kiss. Even if it’s an, “I’m not there yet,” I can accept that too. When I live in hope, everything is a gift.

There is a fine line between hope and expectation. Can I have both at the same time? Not really, I am either awaiting a determined response or I am not. I must set aside expectation. Live in the moment without preconceived ideas about what should happen and simply allow it to unfold. There are no guarantees in life so why live as though there are? I know that if my hope isn’t realized that this hope will not die, but continue on, because it is not fixed to a schedule nor to an outcome. Approach life with the wide-eyed innocence of a child and you will be struck by its wonder and beauty.

♥ ♥ ♥

Please like and share this blog, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River. I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow as well. My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays. Please comment and offer suggestions. I’d love to hear from you.

Peace

Living Change

August 31, 2017August 30, 2017 / Tim / Leave a comment

If I don’t change, I won’t change.

How often in life have we not liked a situation or circumstances and done nothing about them? Perhaps it was a job, a relationship or a where we were living that wasn’t working out. Oh, we could and did complain. We complained about the boss, the spouse, or the neighbourhood to whoever would listen. However, a situation never resolves itself unless something changes.

When I find myself in an intolerable situation I have two of choices. I can either do nothing and hope that somehow it will get better, or I can make the change I want to see. I used to be a master at the first option. I let it slide. I’d tell myself it really wasn’t that bad. I would hope that things got better, I would ignore it. I’d use it as another reason to escape into my addiction. I saw myself as a victim of circumstances or of other people. Rarely did I do anything about it because that would involve me making changes. It’s amazing how we can learn to accept even the most intolerable conditons rather than make a change.

“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”

Often I don’t make a change because I fear that if I make a change things will get worse instead of better. This attitude can be traces back to the idea that we must accept our lot in life. I think serf and slave owners fed us that work ethic. We saw ourselves victims of fate or karma about which we had no control.

Or when we saw others making changes in their lives we focused on their failures, or the amount of effort it took to make the change. We didn’t think we had the necessary abilities or talents to accomplish something similar in our lives. Probably nothing has held us back more than social pressure. “Don’t rock the boat,” we were told. The pressure to conform and be similar to everyone else in our group was too difficult to break away from. We would be all alone if we did something different. No, we had no choice but to keep with the status quo. Or so we thought.

What doesn’t kill me will make me stronger.

One of the things I have learned in the past few years in recovery is that I can survive anything. I know because I have. I have gone through some difficutlt times in sobriety: ending relationships, changes in health, income shifts, moving to a different country. I have survived each major challenge and I believe, learned from each one. Yes there is fear of the unknown. Yes there are obstacles. Yes river is riddled with rocks and eddies. And yet here I am. I have always and will always survive whatever comes my way until I don’t.

I know that I have a connection to something greater than myself. I have come to the conclusion that the next right thing for me to do is what I do. There is no right or wrong. There are only options. Sometimes I like the outcome and sometimes I don’t. But I am making changes, I am learning, I am moving beyond my fears. If my Higher Power loves and cares about me then I know I can trust whatever comes my way.

I embrace change. Sometimes, I admit, it’s about as whole-hearted as hugging a porcupine, but I do it anyway. I know that life is change and nothing stays the same. Oh, I can fight the current, thrash away to keep myself from going through those rapids ahead, but eventually, I will have to go through what lies ahead. Why not save the energy and trust. My fear tells me there is only one possible outcome: disaster. False! There are many possible outcomes to every situation. I am learning that I get through the rapids much quicker if I let the current take me.

Faith will move mountains, but bring a shovel.

I choose to rely upon my Higher Power. I choose to move forward. I choose change over stagnation. I will do the work to move ahead and to grow. I trust. I am the change I wish to be. I may not always be successful by the standards of the world around me, but I’m learning and for me, that’s what this life is all about.

♥ ♥ ♥

Peace

Real Recovery

August 10, 2017August 9, 2017 / Tim / 3 Comments

In the 82 years since the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous, the granddaddy of all twelve step programs, a lot has changed. There is generally a better understanding of what addiction is and how one recovers. There are movies as well as series on regular and cable channels in which twelve step groups are depicted, sometimes fairly accurately. One thing however, that seems to remain the same is the idea of what Recovery looks like. We (including the general public and those who are going in for the first time) think that one goes into a rehab or recovery centre for a month or two and they are cured! To many people, recovery looks like the illustration below.

And, it doesn’t. A far truer representation of recovery is this:

Recovery is messy. It doesn’t last for a month, or two, or a year. It’s a lifetime commitment to staying clean and sober. Sometimes we fall off the page and find our way back on, and sometimes, we just drop off and are never heard from again. It’s a constant struggle to learn new skills, a new design for living that is as strange and foreign to us as using chopsticks for the first time: we understand the concept but we just can’t get our fingers, our minds and the sticks to work together. Food drops off before we get it to our mouth, we splash our new white shirt, and we just want to go back to what we know. We drugged and drank because that was what we knew how to do; that is how we had learned to cope with everything. And now we just want to scream out like a newbie in a Chinese restaurant: “Give me a bloody fork now!”

It takes time. I recall my first year. I can see now that I was still certifiably insane. I owned a business, but didn’t want to answer the phone or open the mail. It was all I could do to attend to clients, get through the day, make it to a meeting and head to bed early. Once a day I would listen to the phone messages. And it took a real effort to make myself open an envelope or go to the bank. Just doing regular, normal things that running a business entailed were monumental feats. Oh, and I felt I deserved a medal every day for doing what little I did do, because I was finally acting like a normal human being doing what normal human beings do. Yup, the elevator wasn’t making it all the way to the top floor.

Like everyone else, I thought that when I went clean everything would be fine, would go back to normal, life would be beautiful and there would be rainbows, and unicorns, and butterflies, with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing in the background. Only, I had been out of it for so long that I had no idea what normal life was supposed to be like. I had badly twisted and damaged my mind and that of those around me as well. I still had all of my faults and character flaws and now that I was sober, I was acutely aware of them. Some days weren’t pretty at all. Early recovery wasn’t what I had expected to it to be.

I am fortunate that I was ready to give myself to the program. I didn’t want to go back to the irrepressible demoralization that was my life. But I complained about it. I remember one member asking me at a meeting, “Do you have a sponsor?” When I said I did, he responded, “I suggest you use him!” Our program has so many tools that help in early sobriety when everything is so new. The meetings, home groups, steps, slogans, sponsors, phone lists and just not drinking the first drink were the first tools that I was given. Gradually I learned to use these tools.

One of the things I learned was that in order to get a year in sobriety I had to go through a whole year in sobriety. It takes time. There are plenty of firsts in that first year: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, festivals, outdoor patios, beaches, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the list goes on. Making it through each one of these firsts added to my resolve to continue. My sponsor guided me through the steps, listened to my B.S. and gave me advice from his own experience. When I made it through that first year, I did it all over again, this time knowing that if I could do it once, I can do it again.

There are still plenty of dips and dives in sobriety. But with time, there is more of a balance in my life. I suggest that new members to give themselves time. It took years reach my bottom and I didn’t climb out of it in a few weeks. Remember the rooms are full of people who will help you to grow and understand and show you how they worked the steps. If recovery were easy everyone would do it. It takes a decision and dedication to make it through that tangled mess of a life, sober.

♥ ♥ ♥

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Once again, please like and share, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River.

Peace