I’m very grateful it’s Saturday, my favorite day of the week. I’m grateful for the newspapers at my door. I’m grateful to not have to lead that terribly exhausting life anymore. I’m grateful for equanimity. I’m grateful for rolling with punches. I’m grateful for seeing what matters. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Well, everybody’s been busy working for the weekend.1 One of the things I love about doing this every day is the way stuff just pops into my head and how unpredictable it all is. For example, just moments ago, I was writing the gratitude list. I will tell you this is not a straight-line exercise; There is a fair amount of mental wandering and distraction that takes place. Anyway, I had just written the part about the terrible, exhausting life of active addiction,2 and the word “equanimity” just popped into my head and hopefully now it’s in yours.
I love dictionaries and encyclopedias. My grandparents had an old set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and I just loved the idea that someone had tried to collect everything worth knowing and putting it in a book.3 That just seemed really cool to me—and still does.4 As for dictionaries, I think I was in high school when I obtained one of my most prized possessions: The compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.5 It’s a two volume set (I think the standard version is something like 26 volumes) and it came with a magnifying glass.6
Anyway, “equanimity” pops into my head and I decide that I should probably look it up and see what it exactly means before I send it out and tell people I’m grateful for it. The OED says it is the “quality of having an even mind.”
The first definition is the context in which I was mostly familiar with the word—fairness, impartiality, I’m pretty sure it found its way into some briefs I wrote.7 But that’s certainly not what was on my mind this morning when I was writing the list.8 The second definition is a direct hit:
Evenness of mind or temper; the quality or condition of being undisturbed by elation, depression, or agitating emotion.
And that is kind of what I’m after this morning. Every morning actually. Alcohol can be a great amplifier—but the problem for me was that it amplified everything. Sure, the good times sometimes became truly great with a little (actually a lot) of drinking. More often, drinking made the middling times routinely terrible and the bad times unbearable. I drank precisely to alleviate “elation, depression and agitating emotion.” I became dependent on drinking to manage all of those difficult emotions.
As I read the definition this morning, it seemed like maybe this is another example of how AA works. Isn’t “equanimity” the exact point of the Steps? Developing a state of mind that can remain steady in the face of challenge and adversity, or just ordinary boredom and annoyance? I realize it’s not about controlling or eliminating those feelings, it’s about being able to ride those feelings out, observing them and sometimes trying to understand what they’re really about. But mostly, for me, it’s about letting them pass. One of the things that truly helped set me free was finally understanding that they would pass, that they did pass, and that things would be ok again. So, I am grateful this morning for some equanimity in my life.
If you haven’t checked out the Liner Notes for Episode 19, you should definitely do so, because Episode XX of Breakfast with an Alcoholic is coming down the tracks.
Thanks for Letting Me Share9
You did know that there are song lyrics hidden in here on a pretty regular basis?
Which was going to be the theme of this morning’s gratitude list. See what I mean?
For a tractor and implement salesman in rural Minnesota, that was a pretty significant investment in education. I’m guessing that’s how my Dad ended up being a university professor.
I guess a bookstore is kind of the same thing. I love them, too.
Dream acquisitions: Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary and the whole-magilla 26-volume set of the OED. Bookshelf space is the constraint but this is very cool: Johnson's Dictionary Online
You can maybe see how “fitting-in” was an issue.
I included that picture because sometimes I think you don’t believe me.
Again, this word just popped into my head, is that an example of something else I talk a lot about? Yes, I think so, too.
I think nine footnotes is probably the record
So first--wow! As soon as I read the word "equanimity" I stopped to look up the meaning and wondered how I'd gone nearly five decades not having met its acquaintance. Then I read on and laughed that the whole post was about that word.
Second, I like the bit about alcohol being "a great amplifier" of everything--especially the middle. Most of my life I tended to be...well, extreme. Some might call me "a lot" or "too much." As I've aged (and paid lots of dollars to counselors), I've mellowed. Your thoughts today will have me pondering all this for days to come. Thanks!
hahaha --great minds think alike! You now know exactly how this morning's newsletter got written. Thanks like for always for all of the nice things you say!