I’m grateful for a Friday morning. I’m grateful for things coming together. I’m grateful for a super cold visit to the pirate balcony. I’m grateful for an oil painting sunrise. I’m grateful for what’s ahead. I’m grateful to not know what that is. I’m grateful to be sober today.
song of the week:
I have a playlist called “Ummmmm, is this really a good idea?” I sometimes add songs to it as reminders of certain kinds of situations that might be better avoided. Some of these songs could be considered slightly resentful, I prefer “aggressively wistful,” but that’s me. These songs are generally not directed to any particular individual or situation, let’s just say they have broad applicability across a spectrum of experiences.
The “song of the week” was headed in a very different direction, just a few days ago.1 I make elliptical comments about my work on time travel, and that’s because there is nothing really to say about my efforts other than that they are elliptical. However, in the course of immersing myself in the epic at-bats of the 1970s (the “Mystery Button” might be seen as examples of “connection.”), well, soon enough it was back to the music of the era. Coincidentally, I must have played that playlist and this song was number one with a bullet.
If I could do a karaoke version of this song without inflicting abject humiliation upon myself and all around me, I would do it. I’d actually endure what others might consider a more than sufficient amount of the bad kind of humility, to do this song. The best part is all the way at the end with the super-spare pedal steel guitar (I think!). Also, what a great line, “Forget about you baby, because I’m leaving today.”
On another note, or not, the Tour de AA made a very special stop at a meeting last night in honor of a certain sponsee who has racked up more than two years of continuous sobriety. This is a grand and signal achievement. No, seriously, it is. The change in S. is not that he gave up drinking; it’s the person he’s become. S. has a very, very strong program and he already helps a lot of people, me included. Watching the program blossom in another person can’t help but impress the hamster wheel voices that aren’t entirely gone yet, or that make a brief re-appearance from time to time, that this s*** works and they’re really not necessary anymore.
S. chairs the Anyone Anywhere meeting on Tuesday evenings and picked the story we read. It was a doozy (yes, of course you’re invited) :
We read “Student of Life” (p. 319) in the back of the Big Book. First, I was struck by the fact that this was basically a word-for-word recitation of my own story. A bit of research on the author determined that she is a contemporary of mine, but a really interesting story beyond what she wrote about her recovery in the Big Book.
The part of her story that really caught me up short was this vignette: She had been struggling with drinking, but not ready to commit to a solution yet. She had a chance encounter with a colleague, who weirdly and completely out of context announces that “things aren’t so good, thanks for asking.” He immediately reveals that he is an alcoholic who had accumulated a bit of sobriety but had just relapsed. Our heroine is taken aback, but also knows exactly what she has to do:
At that very instant, I heard one word in my head. The word was “now.” I knew it meant, “Say something NOW!”
Big Book, p. 325
See, I’m not the only alcoholic who gets the pithy semi-cryptic messages from the Big Guy.
Here’s what happened next (Big Book, p. 325):
To my amazement I spoke the words, “Mike, I think I’m one, too.”
They started going to AA meetings together, and as of 2007 when Jane D. published the fuller account of her story, “Mike” was still sober, too. That story hits me so hard because it shows just how powerful and how simple and how completely accessible the power of whatever the universe is, can be. Jane D. found the courage to be open and honest in the presence of another product of the Universe because the other guy said it first.
For some reason, the symmetry and beauty and mystery of that moment just overwhelms me. It did on Tuesday night when we read it together (and there is also a special power in reading it). It does now when I imagine the conversation. How other-worldly for Mike to pick that moment to mention “Oh, and I’m also an alcoholic who just relapsed after 18 months.” To a co-worker. To someone he didn’t really know. To someone he didn’t know was an alcoholic.
There are lots of potential lessons in there about vulnerability and courage and honesty and desperation, but the one that rings the bell of this aging veteran alcoholic (a veteran only in the redundant sense of the word), is that it isn’t always about me.
I tend to view my life through the filter of “me.” I think that’s broadly considered appropriate, but I have found that sobriety has involved expanding that filter to include other people. Not just the people in my inner circle, but to people I don’t know or maybe only knew for a bit, our intersection designed for a certain time and place only. I began to realize that the things that happen to me are not always “about” me or “for” me.
I don’t know where I stand on the scale of regret-harboring, it seems like there is a fair amount of that among my age-based cohort. There are lots of things I wonder about, why certain things happened or didn’t happen? Whether I could have done something to change what happened? Why or why not?
I can’t provide answers because the questions weren’t for me. The same way that people make unexpected entries and exits in my life, well, I guess I probably play a similar role in other lives. Maybe what is “happening to me” is actually something happening to the other person, something that might help the other person see something or learn something. Weirdly, the realization that it’s not all about me does not diminish me. If anything, it makes me want to pull my shoulders back, get a little swagger going. Even if whatever this is doesn’t really have much to do with me, I still have a super-important part to play. Since I’ve not seen the script for this scene, there’s only one character that I know how to play off-the-cuff.
I’m not going to write “me” or “myself” in big bold, dramatic type (although I do that kind of schmaltzy, over-wrought thing sometimes). But that process is the magic of the Program; The process wherein we find happiness and peace and joy and even sobriety by being a meaningful and valuable part of other people’s lives. That we find ourselves, that we are most able to be ourselves, actually most required to be ourselves, when we act in service to someone else, someone who is not “ourselves.”
If you happened to click on the top-most “Mystery Button,” you would see someone relentlessly being himself. Yeah, most of the time, he would have been way better served trying to hit a single. That is the way to get into the Hall of Fame, but the mistake is assuming that’s what every journey is or could be. I’ve realized that’s not up to me.
Here’s what is2: When they call my name and I’m grabbing my bat and heading up those steps, serious voices saying, “get a hit, baby.” I pick my spot, dig in a little, maybe do that Ken Griffey Sr. (please)/George Foster left arm squeeze to indicate that I am pretty f****** ready. I get focused on the pitcher, I try to calm my breathing, settle in and hope I see a pitch I can hit. But if my at-bat ends in abject failure, three mighty swings and not even a foul tip, maybe it isn’t because I didn’t do my job, maybe it was just about the pitcher today.
There's freedom and peace and meaning just walking up to the plate, even knowing that my career batting average is .247, because that’s exactly why I’m here. Oh, and also because it’s pretty f***** sweet when you don’t even feel the ball connect with the bat for that instant, when you’re watching that beautiful parabola being drawn by that white streak headed towards that left-field wall, when you find yourself pointing back to the dugout from second base. When you realize you didn’t slide to get where you got, you came in standing up.
As is the case every week. Yes, I know.
This is a hypothetical rendering of a moment that has not yet happened—at least in this sector of the multiverse.
Thank you so much for your writing in general and specifically today. I almost fell off my chair when I played your song. Yes, a bit resentful but the honest appraisal I needed today. In my head I added “for me” after her glorious “you’re no good” refrain.
People, places and things. I thought I left that motto behind in early sobriety but 12 years later it’s the most important direction for me to follow today. And yes, it just wasn’t my pitch. Perfect. I’ll continue to follow you on Substack- great addition to the AA program of living I practice on a daily basis.
Well, shoot. I needed to hear this today. :)