I’m grateful for surprises. I’m grateful for how things change and how things work out. I’m grateful to see where I was. I’m grateful the universe has better ways of solving problems than I do. I’m grateful to be sober today.
song of the week:
It’s Spring. Ignoring the fact that it still feels very much like winter, it is undeniably Spring. Easter happened, the vernal equinox happened, so it’s definitely Spring. This song, to me, has a very Spring feel to it. I’ve listened to this song, probably several thousand times. Also, I very much love finding the old Soul Train versions because they were mostly lip-syncing, so you get the studio quality coupled with seeing them live. Best of both worlds.
I’ve mostly planted the gardens that adorn the Pirate Balcony; it might have been too early for the Basil plant that is no longer, however, the daffodils have thrived in the frigid early Spring here. I love the way those yellow blooms stand out on the super cold, gray rainy days we’ve been having. It strikes me as cautiously defiant. And that’s kind of how I feel these days.
Later this month, if alcoholic half-anniversaries are a thing, I’ll officially have 4 and one-half years of sobriety. One of the gifts that sponsees bring is perspective. I was joking with our very own Sean that sponsees can represent a form of time travel; Hearing them say the things I used to say, well, let’s just say I can also see the full extent of the disease. Listening to the struggles of someone in early sobriety, takes me back to my own decade or so of early sobriety. FYI, that is a trip I’m not always enthusiastic about taking.
Remembering those struggles, the days when the hours passed so slowly and it was a chore. mentally exhausting, to keep coming up with ways I could pass the huge yawing non-drinking chasm of time that had just opened up; without drinking, of course. That’s the tricky part. One of my problems is that I just can’t turn off the hamster wheel, it goes on crazy tangents at times of its own choosing and I’m left following haplessly along sometimes. Drinking was a great solution for both of those issues; It let me not hear the hamster wheel and filled the enourmous amount of free time one has when one is not doing anything constructive and has no one in their life.
But enough with the lamentations, the phrase of today is “cautious defiance.” What with my frequent and approving references to many things that I consider “piratey,” it might be concluded that I perhaps have a bit of a defiant streak. Whether it’s drawing a line in the sand over the green peppers still on the dinner plate or the way I kept insisting on trying to recover using my own version of the Program, there is a bit of disdain for the rules, a view that they are mostly meant for other people.
That’s a pretty solid alcoholic meme; that the rules don’t apply to us. You can hear lots of different kinds of people sing that same tune at an AA meeting near you; going through life with the view that the rules didn’t apply, that consequences can always be avoided. For most folks, the fear involved in living that way, the uncertainty and the chaos it generates, is just way too much; they can’t tolerate it and begin to make changes. We alcoholics have drinking for that.
I think there are very few intrinsically “bad” human traits; I don’t really subscribe to the idea of “character defects” either. I think most of those traits can produce good or bad results; I think it depends more on how those traits are employed, by whom and to what end.
Anyway, the thing about believing the rules don’t apply is that it’s just wrong. They do. They always do; it just sometimes takes a bit of time for them to catch-up. The belief that the rules don’t apply could be analogized to the first few moments of a free-fall, even with a huge rock looming over you and the ground fast approaching, it is possible to delude oneself:
Anyway, a big part of recovery is coming to terms with gravity. I don’t mean that strictly in connection with assessing the consequences, sorting through the wreckage of the life that went so far off-track. I think it also means understanding my role in the world, and that entails understanding that rules, like the whole gravity thing, do apply to me after all.
But here’s the funny thing about gravity: The force that is strong enough to pull a huge rock down on top of the hapless coyote, strong enough to have the huge rock accelerating at a monstrous rate of 32 feet per second squared, somehow can’t prevent a single daffodil from poking through the soil. Not to get you thinking about the horror of being buried alive, but think about it, getting out is going to take a lot of effort. That daffodil is not very big, certainly wouldn’t be described as bulky. And yet….
It’s important to note that the daffodil doesn’t choose the time or place of it’s awakening. The daffodil has to live by certain rules, too.But the rules seem to permit quite a bit of latitude, even allowing for a very early arrival. I’ve come to understand that there are quite a few rules that do apply to me, gravity among them. The great thing about these rules is that they turn on a fairly straight-forward set of behaviors; if I’m honest with myself and others about who I am and show up consistently, then the things that are supposed to happen. They generally do, anyway, even when I’d prefer they not.
It turns out that “rules” might be a slightly harsh way of referring to these forces, they simply require a manner of living built on self-honesty. One funny thing, obedience to these rules produces freedom. Another funny thing, without rules, it’s pretty f***ing hard to be a pirate.
I’m not completely sure “cautious defiance,” is the best way to describe this Spring. That implies that what has happened might be in violation of the rules, and it’s pretty clear that’s not the case. Spring is about realizing when it’s time, it’s time. When the right things start to happen, when it’s time to sprout, well, you sprout. There’s not a lot of consideration about what could go wrong, whether it’s still too cold or too wet. It’s that this is the time when things could go right, when things can grow and bloom, so it’s time. It’s Spring.
Four and a half years - wow, TBD! I'm so behind on my reading, but I'm so glad I caught this post of yours. Always nice to read your Wile E Coyote insights as part of the TFLMS scene. 🙂