I’m grateful for seeing how much things have changed. I’m grateful for exciting projects. I’m grateful for reading the Big Book with friends. I’m grateful for seeing how beautifully things unfold, when I let them. I’m grateful to be sober today.
When I try to come up with headlines for whatever these are, I think the thing I’m trying to evoke is the furrowed-brow, “What?!?” Well, here’s how I got there today. I’ve mentioned my grandfather before, whatever pirate-y qualities I possess, were instilled in me by him:
Anyway, when I was a little boy, one of my favorite things was to have him read to me at bedtime. I loved this for several reasons. One—as I got drowsy, he would run his very rough, work-hardened hands very lightly and gently over my eyes. It was a little similar to the way you rub an alligator’s belly to put them to sleep, but much nicer. Two—the stories came from Sports Afield or Outdoor Life or some other hunting magazines. The bedtime stories he read me were usually about camping or fishing or hunting trips that went awry, required some epic survival skills and courage to survive and often involved bears. Not little Gentle Ben-like black bears, no, these were usually Grizzlies or worse, huge monstrous Kodiak bears.
These bears were “Fatal Attraction” bears—in those stories, they were relentless and fierce. I would marvel at how terrified I would be to confront like a 2000 pound bear, or whatever, in the wild with no weapons, no plan, no clear way to survive. And yet, these normal, everyday people managed to survive the bear attack. Sometimes it was Mountain Lions, but that headline didn’t really work.1
Maybe those stories at bedtime helped pave the way for what came later. I’m not sure how that could possible be, but there was now a pretty vivid picture to illustrate what had just been very vague feelings before. That was what it meant to be afraid. I took note and realized a few important things:
Always have a plan (and a potato)
You don’t need to outrun the bear, just your friends
There could be a bear out there anywhere
I think Number One is just super-solid advice, generally. Life is full of outlandish, completely unpredictable scenarios and it may seem ridiculous that I might have a 14-day plan for asserting and projecting power in the event I suddenly rise to power here in NY2. No, of course, it’s not so likely. Neither is invading Canada, but I’ll bet someone has a plan for that. I want to focus on Number Three—the omnipresence of terrifying bears.
The other morning, I was mulling over things and as I skittered from topic to topic in my head, alighting briefly on the people in my life, I found myself getting annoyed, the early stages of being kind of pissed, with just about everyone and everything. And it wasn’t even 6am. I sat there in the dark, nursing my coffee and some grudges, trying hard to get the gratitude list-lawn mower engine to start.3 My arm was getting tired.
I sat back and did one of those deep, mostly unintentional yoga-type exhales that seem to come out of me a lot. I was sitting on the sofa in the living room and even with the windows facing due east, it was a really dark morning. I thought about things, situation by situation, person by person, and started seeing there was more to it.
I had a lot of mornings like this in the olden days. I’d wake up really early and spend the early morning ruminating about why things weren’t right, masticating all of the various indignities visited upon me by other people, heroically staving off withdrawal symptoms, seeing that not only was I hurtling towards the bottom, but there was probably a boulder above me, too. It was a great thing The Commissary opened at 8am and the bartenders weren’t too judgy about serving Sauvignon Blanc with pancakes.4
People talk about “playing the tape forward.” I think this is really only possible when you’ve got a fair amount of sobriety. To be honest, I think this advice is pretty much akin to telling the relapsing alcoholic, “next time, I want you to think about the consequences and control your drinking.” Ummm—see the problem? I think rewinding the tape, or picking a different track on the album, is maybe a more important skill.
Here’s what I mean by that. I’m not really conscious of all the chicanery that goes on in my head. Sure, it’s hard not to hear the squeaky hamster wheel, but things like crossword puzzle answers, or the thing I was supposed to get at the store yesterday, or the memory of a terrible thing, or random bad feelings, just sometimes pop-up. But they didn’t just pop-up. They were fully-formed and ready for action, they had a plan. I think a lot of the dumpster fires that could only be extinguished with flinty wines actually started somewhere in all of that unconscious, spinning stuff.5
The other morning, instead of following the old plan, which was:
Un-holster the grievances, Get them spinning good and fast, and then drink.
I sat in the dark and just thought a little bit about each of the grievances. If there was a person attached to that particular grievance, I wondered about their motivations, their feelings. Was I sure I knew what they really meant or thought? I think that is an application of empathy. I asked myself why I was really annoyed? The first answer that usually comes back (for me) is some nonsense about someone else trying to keep me from getting something that I richly deserve or need. More or less. It didn’t take too much looking to see it was just fear at the level below that. I was afraid that I was being perceived a certain way. I was afraid I was being taken advantage of, not respected, not valued. I was afraid I wouldn’t get what I need. I was afraid.
For me, the hard part about expressing things like that, fears, is that they tend to make one feel somewhat vulnerable. This ran counter to the persona I thought would be necessary to survive the inevitable bear attacks. Introspection is not the weapon I wanted to bring to a fight with a bear.
But once I acknowledge those fears to myself, there’s usually a moment of recognition, “yes, that's a better explanation for what I’m feeling.” Smarter people than me have told me that fear begets anger. I think fear actually begets quite a bit—he’s a pretty promiscuous little pest. Well, that’s not actually quite right. When I spend a little uncomfortable time meditating on that fear, understanding what I really feel and where, I can often see the part of me that’s afraid and why.
When that happens, I almost always physically sag and let out another dramatic-sounding breath, I don’t have to fight that feeling anymore. There’s no need to fight at all. And here’s the other thing. The other person, the generator of the proto-grudge, there’s a good chance they’re acting out of fear, too. So, I probably don’t need to fight them either.
People do shitty things sometimes, me included. But most of the time, the shitty stuff people “do” hasn’t really happened, it’s mostly made up in my head, “assumed.” What the Program has given me, what sobriety and working the Steps have give me is not a God I pray to in the dark and turn over everything and hope it all turns out ok. Working the Steps and the sobriety they generated gave me a way of seeing myself and other people, the whole world, universe, galaxy, multiverse existing in a kind of harmony. It gave me the ability to see how my thoughts and feelings helped get me to a place where drinking was a necessary part of the equation. It helped me see it wasn’t all my fault or because I’m just a shitty person. It helped me see the map and the flashlight were there all the time, I just needed a Higher Power to take the blindfold off and let me finally find that path.
Here’s something else I eventually figured out. Those bears in those stories might not be exactly true. Maybe someone saw or heard a bear, or maybe even a brief and scary encounter. But the part where they spend the next 18-hours climbing down cliffs and shooting rapids and all sorts of other dangerous adventures, running away from the ferocious, ravenous bear? Well,
Are you sure the bear is still back there?
Sometimes, the tape that’s playing in my head is like Helter Skelter on the White Album and there’s that weird talking-backwards, creepy nonsense. Listening to that song is going to take me in a direction that I might regret later and probably isn’t so recovery-centric. Sobriety and the Steps turned Helter Skelter into this6:
Don’t you know it’s going to be, shooby doo, alright?
If you were interested, I usually come up with the title at the end.
I really hope you’re not a horn-honker. Those two weeks are going to be hard on you.
This could be when I clench my teeth and write about how truly grateful I am for things that I didn’t want to happen.
Yes, this has been discussed before.
This part of the theory could use more “science.”
Yes, I really wish this came before “Helter Skelter” on the White Album so I could really nail the rewind the tape thing. Oh well..
'Always have a plan... and a potato'? And no footnote? My brain needs closure, T.B.D.! Please explain!