I’m grateful for another bright, sunny morning. I’m grateful for what happens when one foot goes in front of the other. I’m grateful for the miracle of coffee. I’m grateful for trying being its own reward. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I am very often accused of over-complicating things and, literally, “thinking too much.” I am so going to fix that today. I’m really only familiar with my own experience of thoughts and thinking and dreaming and consciousness and what-not, I literally have no idea what goes on in anyone else’s head or how that feels. Or maybe I do? I think one of the really big questions for me is whether other people feel the way I do, experience things in a similar way? Or is my experience completely unique?
Maybe you’ve already got the head-tilt and scowl going. Let me try to explain. One thing you hear in AA are pithy and dismissive comments about “terminal uniqueness.”1 That one of the goals of recovery is “curing terminal uniqueness,” or perhaps, “melting the snowflake.”2 You also hear alcoholics describe their younger years as involving a sense of “apartness,” an inability to see things that other people see, or to understand what other people are trying to get across.
For this alcoholic, the sense that I was not like other people was a very strong force that impelled me towards drinking. I did not enjoy the taste of alcohol. It was worse than the worst cough syrup to my 15-year old palate. I hated the taste and the smell. I needed the effect. I didn’t start drinking because I thought I was better than everyone else, that it was some kind of privilege that was accorded to me on account of my superior intelligence and lost-boyish charm. I drank because I desperately wanted to join the herd.
Later, I drank to forget that the whole “joining the herd thing” had been an utter disaster. For all involved.
My issue with the war on terminal uniqueness language or the self-attacking snowflake metaphors is that they suggest these are bad habits that should be eradicated. Self-indulgent exercises of self-full-ness.3 It seems to me it’s exactly the opposite. The feeling of apartness that pervaded this alcoholic’s pre-drinking years is a hole that needs to be filled. But not with shame or finger-wagging.
Shaming myself for my terminal uniqueness is like blaming myself for feeling empty and apart.
My view of the effectiveness of shame probably stems from my time as an actual dog.4 I think shame is completely and totally counterproductive when applied to alcoholics and addicts: It simply recreates one of the conditions that was a foundation for all of the drinking and using. That’s why I think those “Consequences” sessions in rehab are misguided, maybe even not helpful. Same with the whole, “I’m going to wreck your drinking” approach that is sometimes employed. See, here’s the problem with that: I was an alcoholic for like 40 years because it was an integral part of me. Wreck the drinking….
Anyway, stepping off the soapbox, filling that hole, the expanse between our experiences and those of others, is a central challenge in recovery. As you know, we’ve been slogging through Steps One and Two for lo very many months now. Here’s where we finally have arrived:
Third Step of the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.
This is a weird, complicated, rubber-hitting-road, critically important but super hard to understand Step. Parsing out the meaning of words like “will” as contrasted to “our lives” is a little mind-bending. I think the challenge of the Third Step is coming up with an answer to one very simple question:
What is my place in the Universe?
We are going to start parsing through those very thorny concepts, but think it’s important to understand the overall strategic objective. Step One required us to acknowledge the existence of a problem that we are not capable of solving ourselves. Step Two is the process of imagining what help is necessary to resolve the issue identified in Step One. Step Three is only turning over the keys to the whole shebang to this source of help that we just met only a step ago.
Quick digression. And this is an actual digression. Sometimes my days could accurately be described as point-to-point adventures involving stops for coffee. Late one morning over the weekend, I was engaged in just such a pursuit and I found myself making notes in my notebook, sipping an okay Cortado and sitting amidst not one, but two introductory “coffee dates.” Neither was off to a promising start. The younger, probably never to be a couple, coffee date had gone off the rails almost immediately. I wasn’t listening to every word, but the young man’s explication of his goals for life in NY (and he seemed to be pretty pulled together, just from an appearance perspective) provoked a stream of criticism from the young woman, culminating in, “I just don’t understand why anyone would want to live their life that way.” But, what did you do last weekend?
It’s possible his way of life involved serial killing or something else terrible, I couldn’t hear that part. I’m just saying, even I knew the enterprise was doomed. Then we turn to the gentleman a bit older than myself on the other side. This was a Joe and the Juice location on the Upper East Side, so they also have a variety of juices and smoothies and such.5 This fellow was loudly conducting a telephonic conversation announcing his arrival, detailing his dress and appearance, offering to purchase a beverage for his soon to be ex-acquaintance and then, in response to some kind of question, launching into a very long and fairly condescending lecture on the importance of fruits and vegetables and the science of juicing and what not.6 I had to turn the music up and get out of there.
Sorry. So back to the Third Step. When I talk about this with the Sponsees, I often talk about the “operational” aspects of the step. I mean, if you’re going to consider turning over your life AND your will (why are they two separate things?), shouldn’t you have a pretty detailed understanding of how this thing could actually work? I think there are lots of subsidiary questions:
What is involved in turning these things over?
What exactly am I turning over?
How will I know that it has been turned over?
How do I communicate with this Higher Power to whom things have been turned over?
What can I expect this Higher Power to do as far as the “caring” thing is concerned?
Who exactly is this Higher Power again?
There are many questions to be answered. But the fundamental one, and the one that has to be answered last,
What is my place in the Universe?
Coming to that answer is critical in recovery, because the fundamental symptom of alcoholism and addiction is being completely lost. Lost even to ourselves. I became an alcoholic, in part, because I didn’t understand my place in the Universe. I didn’t understand how the unique aspects of me fit in with the rest of the world. Maybe I was an arrogant, lonely second grader, when those feelings first started taking hold, but I don’t think so. I was already lost and making pretty good speed on the path I had definitely not “chosen.”
That sounds too dramatic and irrevocable. Of course, it’s not. The Twelve Steps are all about finding that compass and making a map. I say the thing about recovery being about recovering one’s self, finding the parts that got lost. But it’s about more than that, it’s understanding the value of those lost parts.7 The point of this is rejoining the herd, but on terms that we can sustain. Meaning it has to be the actual, whole, integrated person. This is not an easy undertaking for the alcoholic, which is why there are a lot of Steps and they are designed to take a lifetime to complete.
That’s not to be taken as discouraging news. The cure for my terminal uniqueness was not applying a corrosive substance until it disappeared, like a wart. It was seeing I could be my whole self around other people and still have a place. And, it turns out, it’s a place that I was always after. A place where I was understood and my quirks appreciated, not just tolerated. A place where I felt brave enough to be myself and show that to other peoples. A place that bred courage and hope and kindness.
I think I had this fantasy my whole life about “being found.” The idea that one sunny day, the right person would come along, see me drinking coffee and writing in a notebook and recognize me for exactly who I am and appreciate what I did and love me anyway. Even maybe because of all of those things, the quirks and weird ways and funny ideas about the world.
I finally found that person and that place. It turns out he was here pretty much the whole time. We get coffee a lot.
Not a hidden train reference. Also, there will be some kind of prize for anyone who can explain why what’s behind the “Mystery Button” makes me literally cry when I hear it. Every time.
We take it on faith that all snowflakes are different. Has anyone really checked? There are an awful lot of snowflakes in the world.
So far today, there is one made up word and one made up cliche in here. It seemed to me the world might need a better, exact opposite of self-less-ness. I aspire to create cliches that will become part of the Western Cannon, like, “you better have your shit in a can.” Just wait on that one a bit.
In a prior life.
I think the coffee there is good, too.
We’re not even addressing the notion of the phone familiarity before the coffee date.
Perhaps :shamefully discarded: would be more apt. Meaning discarded out of shame.