Sounds of Silence

I’m grateful for the way a dark, winter-gray morning turned bright. I’m grateful for having so much beauty around me. I’m grateful for ideas and inspiration. I’m grateful for the next chapter. I’m grateful to be sober today.

I was up really early this morning. It was still pretty dark, not much observable light on the horizon. I started the very drawn-out, multi-stage coffee-making process. I was absent-mindedly looking out the window, waiting for water to boil, and something struck me. I wasn’t really thinking anything.

My mind wasn’t spinning out a thousand crazy thoughts on a thousand crazy topics. I wasn’t filled with dread as I imagined all of the contours of the next, imminent catastrophe. I wasn’t filled with shame or self-loathing or even anger, as I went back in time and fought all of the old fights. In fact, I didn’t go back in time to fight any of the old fights. I just kept looking out the window.

When the sun came over the horizon, finally lighting the East River, the sky had a classic, wintry look: Dark blue-gray clouds, dashed with yellow-orange streaks.By this point, the kettle on the stove was starting to whistle. I donned the Danish oven mitt and began the elaborate pouring process—it involves multiple vessels and timelines.¹

I was finally pouring the first cup of coffee and it occurred to me that I hadn’t really been thinking much of anything. I have been plagued, since my earliest recollections, with a really rapid cycling of thoughts. I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression for most of my life, and the hyper-rapid thought swirl was the worst part of it. It was capable of turning moments of ordinary disappointment into existential turning points—and things were always turning south from there.

I’ve been in a lot of therapeutic situations, have had a number of different therapists, been to several different rehabs, and the thing I heard at every stop was the not-so-scientific, “you think too much.” This is not a terribly helpful piece of prescriptive advice. When I was a kid and had terrible difficulties sleeping, the advice was “don’t think about those things.”

I was one of those poor unfortunates that had missed the briefing and didn’t know where the brain on/off switch was. That is, until I had that Pink Jesus Punch at Deak Rummelhart’s house. Lots of alcoholics and addicts tell the story of feeling separate, alone, apart and how drinking suddenly built a bridge to the mainland. That’s part of my story, too. But the reason I did so much of my drinking alone, was that was when I most needed to.

I was terrified at the prospect of being alone and drinking was what I thought summoned up the courage to face that abyss. It’s hard to really describe the sense of terror I sometimes felt at the prospect of being alone. The funny thing, and I realized this many years ago, was that I adopted a solution for the fear of sitting at home alone that involved sitting at a bar near my home alone. That was another bit of self-deception: That drinking was a cure for the loneliness and the fear.

As we all know, alcohol has a paradoxical effect in those areas, often offering a temporary reprieve, but gradually worsening each of those conditions. The answer to all of this: Don’t think so much. Just Stop.

I think a lot of what gets taught in treatment centers is intended to aid the decision process involved in “just stopping it.” There were a whole litany of things not to think about in treatment and I was apparently never able to accomplish what was the central skill of recovery, stop being obsessed with alcohol.

I very much embrace meditation and it has helped me tremendously—by helping me find maybe not the master on/off switch, but at least a bit of daily peace, an enforced moment of silence in my nearly 24-hour brain factory. But meditation wasn’t enough either.

It’s not just this morning that I find myself engaged in longer and longer moments of reverie. Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched a young red-tailed hawk take up residence nearby. I’m pretty sure he perched on my railing briefly one morning when he was very young, still fuzzy and more duck-looking than hawk-looking. Sometimes, I’ll be in the kitchen during the day, making tea or more coffee or something, and I’ll see the hawk, usually turning circles above the building at 89th and York. For a while, a crew of pigeons would try to drive him away with what looked like ultimately self-defeating mini-dive bombing efforts. The hawk would simply find the next air current, turn two effortless circles and be 50 feet above the pigeons in seconds, barely flapping his wings.

I think these moments are called serenity. As is the case with the Pledge of Allegiance, the Apostle’s Creed, the original tagline for the Big Mac, the Boy Scout Laws and the Serenity Prayer, constant repetition of a familiar set of words can render them meaningless.²

It turns out that elusive on/off switch was hiding in plain sight. All of those times I was told to not think so much, all of the times I went to try and accomplish that at different bars, all of the times I went to meetings to try and figure out how to stop thinking so much. It was right there the whole time. I was just asking the wrong person to do the job.

For me, peace and serenity began to arrive, and the obsession with drinking began to wane, as I actually did the Second and Third Steps, where they need to be done. In my heart. I think the talking and the writing around the Second and Third Steps set the stage and begin the process, but it’s the gradual occupation of the heart by whatever form of spirituality one is tuned to, that finally does the job.

I finally realized I can’t manufacture peace and serenity. It’s actually the first line in the most recognizable text we alcoholics and addicts have:

God, grant me the serenity…

The moments of quiet are not the consequence of a secret, ninja-like, walking and drinking coffee, meditation technique. They are the direct consequence of making a decision to turn my will and life over to the care of a higher power that was capable of restoring me to sanity. Acceptance, willingness and change are the other parts of that prayer; more things that are granted, not manufactured.

I love the still, quiet mornings. I love the simple freedom of not thinking so much, as I gaze down York Avenue. I watch the clouds drift by, the sky change, there will be time for worries and concerns and calendar invites later this morning. Now, I’m appreciating that the thing I prayed for, finally arrived. I’m free to live moment-to-moment because I’ve come to believe there is some force in the universe that tends to push results to the “okay” category, even when that doesn’t always seem so likely.

Sometimes, the results produced by the Big Guy are truly spectacular and defy explanation. Most of the time, things are very quiet here, the wonder that fills my heart when the hawk flies by, somehow becomes the courage to live the next moment and the next. Not that those moments typically require any special bravery, although sometimes they do. It’s that those moments require me to be true to myself, like it says on the AA chip, and that requires courage.

The moments of serenity, the deep sense of satisfaction involved in looking at the other pieces of this wondrous puzzle turning lazy circles in the air, come from recognizing that I’m not “apart',” but “a part.” I came to believe that the world was stitched together in a way, such that the things that were supposed to happen, generally did happen. Sobriety wasn’t about changing the things that were going to happen, it was accepting that they would, and knowing there would be a path for me to follow on the other side.

It occurs to me that this hawk and I share some things in common. We’re both relatively new to the neighborhood and from the looks of things, our friend the young hawk spends a lot of time on his own, too. He doesn’t seem troubled by this, nor should he be, things are unfolding as they will and he occupies a very enviable position. He has a perch that affords him a magnificent view and the sense that when he sees opportunity, the waiting and the “just being,” the floating on the wind, will have him perfectly positioned for what is supposed to happen next. That’s how I think it works for me, too.

1. I went to Stockholm and Copenhagen about a year ago and what I brought home was an oven mitt from a store in Copenhagen and also a very cool wooden toothbrush. Which, was unfortunately sacrificed when I was “Guest of the Day” at the O’Hare Westin. So, we’re left with the Danish oven mitt.

2. “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.”