I am very grateful for sleeping in this morning. I’m grateful for a completely delicious pot of coffee. I’m grateful for a very foggy, rainy day that goes perfectly with a new umbrella. I’m grateful to be where I belong. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Thursday morning was supposed to shape up differently. However, someone’s sleep schedule is off, and for someone with a fairly abnormal sleep schedule to be off…Anyway, things are fine, actually way better than fine, and not to get all Stuart Smalley on you, but I think it’s important to remind myself about that quite often. Wait, you may not have even gotten that reference:
One of the things I’ve been struck by is how we alcoholics and addicts share some common thinking patterns.1 When you listen to other alcoholics tell their stories at meetings, even though the facts and circumstances can differ wildly, there are commonalities in the way we view the world, the way we think. We tend to walk through the world with the catastrophe lens on, the better to see how we’ve been slighted, not respected in nearly every interaction. We tend to walk through the world with a deeply-seated set of insecurities, a portable library of shame. There is a great elixir for that brew of toxic thoughts and feelings.
I think the point of acceptance and some of the related topics is to instill a sense that things are ok for people who go through life always convinced of the opposite, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. People get so hung up on the “Promises,” as though there isn’t a point to sobriety unless there is something you can earn, frequent non-drinker points you can amass. For this alcoholic, the mind-blowing, earth-shattering, conciousness-expanding2 thing about sobriety was that from moment-to-moment thing were ok. Things were going to be ok. The secret behind the huge shift that turned off the spigot? It’s not a huge shift. It’s actually pretty small and it doesn’t take much to start. You know my favorite passage in the Big Book:3
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.
Big Book, p. 12
Here’s the other pro tip. That beginning thing, well, you can approach every day that way, like it’s a beginning. That’s how things changed for me as I began to conceive that there might be a power in the Universe that could possibly help restore me to sanity, restore me to the person I was meant to be, leading the life I was meant to live.4 That willingness is all that it takes to begin transforming life and it works by re-framing how you look at things. Instead of cataloguing disappointments and frustrations, there are gratitude lists. Instead of sulking about the latest batch of disrespectful events, it's helping someone who has real stuff to worry about. It's really nothing more than approaching life with the sense that things will be ok. That the things that are supposed to happen, probably will happen.5
Life is pretty good here, very okay as a matter of fact. It’s a rainy, foggy day (some might call it “Lab Weather”) and I know someone with a new umbrella. You people with your lemons and lemonade, that’s cool. I’m working on a different metaphor and it involves how you look at rainy days when you have a swanky umbrella.
I’m going to leave you today, with a collection of some of the favorite things I saw in Paris:
Thanks for Letting Me Share
Usually, not many of you click on the buttons or watch the videos or listen to the songs and I’m hoping that holds true this morning, because this is scarily on-point. If I start to get like this, well, hopefully at least one of you will have the courage to do what’s necessary. And if you are already looking for me, well, I just hope you’re going to be a pro about it.
There has to be a long German word for this.
You don’t?
Do you watch the videos from the Webb space telescope obsessively, too? There is some pretty weird, f****** out there. Bill W’s power greater than himself might be the least strange thing in the Universe.
Note: This is not limited to good things.
Lovely post, and pictures! I particularly like the sign with the blackbird to mark the protected space for observing wildlife.
I wish I could furnish you with the long German word you're looking for to represent "the mind-blowing, earth-shattering, conciousness-expanding thing" - because they stack their words together so very beautifully - but the best phrasal suggestion for a translation that I can come up with (as a non-native speaker, so forgive me) is:
"die überragende, welterschütternde, bewusstseinserweiternde Sache"
That first adjective isn't a literal translation - it kind of translates as 'overwhelming'. 'Mind-blowing' might be better as 'bewusstseinsveränderte', meaning 'consciousness-altering', but that's 'bewusstseins...' twice in one phrase, so, well......!
🤣
I refer to Stuart smalley all the time 🙃