Glad to see you again! Before I forget, if you’re still looking to catch up on last week, well, let me suggest the all-new, super exciting, Saturday Gratitude Round-Up:
I had a Saturday that I think is probably only possible in a few places. After revolutionizing the way we’re presenting our gratitude list (this is Day 2 of the experiment), I put on clothes that did not include a baseball cap and I went to the opera. Specifically, I saw “Lady MacBeth of Mtensk,” written in the Soviet era by Dmitri Shostakovich. The storyline is pretty nuts: Young, bored wife in a loveless marriage ends up with one of the workers from the factory and then poisons her husband and father-in-law to cover it up. She then marries the factory worker, but it’s not exactly a happy ending. The opera was very popular after it’s premier until word got out that Stalin had seen it and really hated it. 1
Afterwards, I went to the bookstore to find a used copy of Robert Conquest’s biography of Stalin2 and then since I was right there, stopped at the Farmer’s Market and found tonight’s dinner. Pretty fabulous day. I’ve been thinking about the opening song of the opera and boredom. Katerina basically shrieks over and over about how bored she is. The workers in the factory sing about how bored they are. Ultimately, the boredom drives some pretty terrible decisions, several people meet untimely deaths, there are lots of lies and secrets and the whole thing ends in a predictably tragic and bleak way. Somehow, that felt familiar to me.3
When I think about my drinking career, I think of how many times I drank just because I really had nothing better to do. I should amend that, I drank because I didn’t want to do anything better. There were plenty of opportunities to do things that were way more fascinating and engaging than sitting alone at the Logan Tavern drinking my my seventh Sauvignon Blanc, eating heat-lamped buffalo wings and watching whatever nonsense was on the tv above the bar. Whenever I finally made my way home, I felt strangely unfulfilled.4
I’ve written before about the definition of “courage” and the connection to recovery and sobriety:
Remember the Liner Notes for Episodes 22 and 23 of Breakfast with an Alcoholic? Just click the picture!
Drinking robbed me of courage. Drinking prevented me from living a life with “the heart as the seat of feeling, thought, etc.” It’s funny how often people use the phrase “Liquid Courage,” the fanciful idea that drinking somehow instills true bravery. Drinking just let me ignore the consequences of how I was living, it did not provide me the resolve to take on the challenges of life squarely and honestly.
Alcohol only enabled me to hide and avoid.
If authenticity and honesty, owning your life, is what true courage is about, then drinking was the exact opposite for me. I don’t think courage is limited to battling dragons or other scary situations, I’m coming to think that anytime I express myself honestly and authentically, even if it’s what I do with my free time, it is an expression of “courage.”
That brings me back to boredom. When I drank, nothing else really mattered to me. I didn’t want to go places, do things, be with people, I just wanted to drink and carefully curate the thoughts and feelings that would set up the same equation for tomorrow and the next day. Life was boring and the only diversion my alcoholic brain could generate for me was maybe trying a different place to drink. For sure, that loss of pleasure and desire is linked, for me, to depression as well, but medicating my depression with alcohol just made sure that there was no other possibilities.5
Life is very different these days. Courage doesn’t just make it possible to face the challenges and adversities of life, it makes it possible to truly enjoy life. I may be sad or lonely or tired or uninspired sometimes, but I’m not bored anymore. Yesterday was a pretty groovy day and I have a feeling today will be, too.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
How faraway does a world where leaders have opinions on operas seem?
Check.
Don’t worry, I don’t even have rat poison.
This is a sarcastic understatement.
There was a scene in the opera where they covered the coffin of the father-in-law with concrete—no way that secret was getting out.