What is Meant for Me...

I’m grateful it’s Fall. I’m grateful for the streaks of blue in the gray rainy sky. I’m grateful for the things and people who got me here. I’m grateful for everything that’s new. I’m grateful to have found myself. I’m grateful to be sober today.

song of the week:

I have loved this song for quite a long time. Way back in the late 90’s, early 2000’s, I was working for an insane internet company and pretty much everything in my life was thinly-disguised chaos. I was at the height of my alcoholism and was living a double or triple life. It was impossible to keep up with all the lies and they eventually overtook me.

My few lucid moments every day were in the car every morning, driving to the office. I was alone and alert and mostly sober at that hour (I was not at the pancakes and sauvignon blanc phase, yet). Did I reflect on the error of my ways, look into my heart and see what was missing, what was gone? No, I cranked songs like this one to earsplitting levels and sang along:

Hey, hey, I want to spread the news, 
If it feels this good to get used, 
You just keep on using me, 
Until you use me up.

In case I’m not being clear, I didn’t just sing this song, I belted this one out.¹ Is it weird to say I believed in this song? I believed in this song. If you’d like to see the visual representation, this is maybe the coolest sequence (I think) in any sports movie I’ve seen:

Why am I so drawn to this song? You know my tired theory by now, I get super attached to songs that end up telling a part of my life, capturing some of what I was, or who I was, at particular moments. For me, the songs I like and listen to over and over, tell some part of my story—sometimes in advance.

Most of my music consumption occurs within my library of Spotify playlists—so aside from the usually pretty lame Spotify recommendations, my exposure to new music is a bit haphazard. When I hear a song I like, I usually know right away.² I’m not always sure about why I like the song, what it is that compels me to listen to it over and over. A lot of times the sudden emotional attachment to the song doesn’t make sense. For example, beginning sometime in the sixth or Seventh Grade I used to listen to this song all the time (on the record player), later I would quietly sing it to myself on my long, solitary nocturnal walks around Iowa City. It didn’t make sense for 15 year-old TBD, but it does now:

Also, Burt Bacharach is not a very good singer and neither was I, so I could definitely pull it off.

I think part of my problem, one of the factors that contributed to my very long struggle with alcohol, was the too-early development of a “F*** me? No, F*** you” attitude. At some point, I determined that there wasn’t that much that really mattered. I’m not sure how I got to that point, I read a lot of existentialist stuff in junior high and high school and maybe some of it took root. Part of it was the message of Scandinavian Lutheranism, “you shouldn’t expect that much and then you’re going to die.”

That’s how I began to approach life. As a young lawyer, I’d take any assignment, worked preposterous hours and was always ready for more. At some point, I began to see my value in terms of how much I could take, how big a burden could I carry. Then I went to the insane internet company and did the same thing x2 or x8. I was like Dennis Quaid in that fabulous sequence from “Any Given Sunday,” although I wore “13.” And like Dennis Quaid in that movie, my devotion to this religion of nothingness cost a great deal. But like Dennis Quaid in that movie, I got paid quite a bit and that somehow seemed to answer the question of why I was doing this.

For me, a big part of the journey has been coming to understand the emptiness of my life before. All of the glitz and glamour end up meaning very little. I keep coming back to “Signed, Sealed, Delivered:

Seen a lot of things in this old world, 
when I touched them, 
they meant nothing, girl

The things I remember, the things I cherish, are not the amazing dinners at places where no one can get reservations or selfies at Instagram travel destinations, they were playing basketball with my son on the Fisher Price hoop in the basement, hanging my daughter’s first whiteboard when she was a seventh grader.

I realize now that the moments that matter are when we, and the others in our lives, see and value us for who we really are, at that moment.

As a young lawyer, I used to frequent a very swanky bar in the lobby of our very swanky building. The impeccably tuxedoed maitre’d used to greet me with open arms and an exuberant, Iranian-accented, “Counselor, it is so good to see you again.” While this felt great in the moment, well, let’s just say it didn’t have much staying power. What does have staying power is when I have the courage to simply be me, let go of the pretensions and aspirations, and simply see what happens next.

The Big Book suggests that one of the nasty culprits is the alcoholic ego; the delusion that we are the directors of a great show that will come off to great acclaim if only all the morons and idiots will do as they have been instructed. What I have come to realize is that the life I was meant to lead could not even start until I gave up this very wrong perspective on my role in the world.

It was not until I let go of all of my efforts to determine the life I was going to lead, and also set the roles of my co-stars, that I began to see how I really fit into this whole thing. Until I gave up my made-up construct for the life I thought I was supposed to be living, I couldn’t begin to live the life that was actually meant for me. Until I let go of everything not meant for me, what was meant for me couldn’t find me.

My life is simple and quiet. I work a lot and I love going to the office. I cook and go to the movies and read; I skulk around bookstores and used record stores. I love wandering around the Met or Central Park. I’m there when my kids call. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but when I sip my very strong coffee in the inky darkness that engulfs the pirate balcony in the early mornings, all I can think of is how satisfied and content I am. There’s not much I would trade about my life right now, and trust me, this all didn’t happen on account of my planning and wisdom.

It took a pretty rough bounce, or seventeen, off the bottom, to dislodge the notion that I was capable of managing my own life in a way that would bring happiness and peace to myself and the people I loved. That this is exactly what is transpiring now is not because my plan has finally come to fruition, it’s because I finally accepted what is, learned what I can change, and came to see the rest as a gift meant to guide me from point to point in my very interesting life.

Emptying myself was what it took to empty the seeming inexhaustible sea of flinty Sauvignon Blanc. Seeing and feeling the emptiness of my life, as I was leading and directing it, was what let me let go of the false gods I’d been worshipping. I probably haven’t been to the newest, trendiest restaurant downtown, I’m probably not getting my tux out of the closet for a gala any time soon. Perhaps you would look at my life and think it seemed a little too quiet, maybe it would even seem empty. There was a time I thought that way, too, and it drove me to a lot of desperate, unhappy, self-destructive places.

Here’s the secret I know (but maybe am not supposed to), the Universe is busy filling that cup. What is meant for me is about to happen, that’s the belief that fills my heart and sits with me on the subway on the way home from work. It’s that belief that helped me recover from nearly 40 years of alcoholic drinking. It’s that belief that keeps me sober—and happy.

What is meant for me is about to happen. Probably for you, too.

Happy Friday

1. I have done this song at karaoke. I’m going to say the sameness of they keyboard backing makes recovering when you lose your place very difficult.

2. This often applies to people, too.