Caught In The High Beams

CAUGHT IN THE HIGH BEAMS

The topic of humility came up for discussion today and Joan popped her hand up, immediately going to a place where she always goes when she wants to blame herself. Last night she ran over a faun. And of course she blamed herself for it. She pulled her car over in the rain and just stood in front of the headlights staring at the little dead thing on the road, another driver pulled over and commiserating, said that it had happened to him too and wasn’t it a shame that they just dart out like that. He helped her pull the faun to the side of the road while she awaited the police, all the while replaying the scene, how could she have changed the outcome?, could she have not been going so fast?, was she going too fast?, was it the rain?

 

And so on, the second guesses kept coming until she was struck with a vicious thought  “ where was the mother”, trying to blame it all on an alcoholic Mother Bambi that was in absentia, as she no doubt felt herself to have been at other times in other places. “I always go to that self blame place when things like this happen. I probably couldn’t have avoided this but I went there anyway because that is my default position.”

Humility for her would be realizing that she is not so important or great enough in the grand scheme of things to be able to effectuate the outcome of all events. Humility would mean having been able to accept the outcome of her situation regardless of whether she liked it or not.

Tom then mentioned that he observed a flash of familiar behavior when dealing with his 30 year old adult daughter. She was looking for a pair of sneakers and when she could not immediately find them she burst out in a stream of invective, a torrent of cursing, totally over the top and untoward and unsuitable to the situation. Tom, who had recognized more than a bit of himself in this behavior when he had been drinking, was too embarrassed to say anything and decided not to have a bruhaha just then as he thought it would be non productive. But it bothered him and was more than humbled by the notion that this “bad” acting was “inherited” by his daughter from him, no doubt through his fatherly demonstrations of parenting. Embarrassed, humiliated, and now needing to become humble he decided to take the bull by the horns.

So the next day when he drove his daughter to the station for her to return the NYC where she lived, he asked her to sit by him in the car a bit before she went for her train. And at that point he reminded her that he was in the AA program you remember “yes dad, I know”.

 

“ 'You know that I faced issues myself like that loss of temper that you had. I deal with the causes for that behavior in AA and the degree that alcohol played in it. I do not know if you believe alcohol played any part in your behavior yesterday but it didn’t have to. The principles are the same. I don’t let that rage let me reach the point of that behavior anymore because it is not fair, it is non productive, it holds others hostage to that rage and it keeps people at arm’s length and they do not know what to do with it so they shut down.' And I thought she was going to get angry but she just sat quietly, nodded and went off to catch the train. 

 

"The next day she called to say that she appreciated the talk and recognized exactly what I had been saying about myself and her own behavior and appreciated the gentle observation; because it was better to get it from dad than from anyone else.” And with that Tom’s voice trailed off ‘humbly’.

James always has something pithy to say and today was no different. “I spend all day with myself and I am always fascinated by my story; All the time. (And then he repeated “…and I am always fascinated by my own story.”) And today I listen to yours and slowly become fascinated by yours. That’s humbling, and something I am not used to experiencing. Humility isn’t thinking LESS about you, it is thinking about you less.

Jock was thinking that playing a round of golf with his son and his daughter was in some instances humiliating, particularly when he would have to referee the fights that inevitably broke out between them around the 5th hole. But he allowed how that paled in comparison to the family situation that obtained three years ago when he had just given up coke, ecstasy, marijuana, and alcohol. He had almost committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning and was certainly near death in other physical ways. He had emotionally checked out from his kids and wife.

 

So today arguments around the fifth hole with putters raised over shoulders and giggles running rampant on the golf course are a long way from the sealed garage and a humbling reminder of the rough road he and we all have traveled.

Had I not heard the Bambi story I would have identified with Tom and if not for Tom then Jock and if not for him then any number of others who spoke up during the hour. All of us have great stocks of humility stored from the humbling events of our lives; events we no longer try to control, wills we no longer try to bend to ours, and rivers, the courses of which we no longer try to change. 

 

These are losing propositions, as they always were. I just now can finally admit it and it is in that admission that I have found my own humility.

Res 7/14/10

RISK/REWARD RATIO

I was speaking with Nigel apropos of the meeting this morning which was laden with shares regarding how boring and lonely life was after alcoholism and how unstimulating sobriety has become. But everyone agreed that being sober far outweighed the consequences of alcoholism.

Jake shared that he is now going on 2 ½ years of sobriety and he is in a lonely slump. He has no girlfriend, he is at sea as to what to do on a Friday or any other night and the only friend he has is his puppy. And he has the feeling that wherever he goes he feels out of place. The girlfriend is an old story with Jake and nobody has been able to counsel him adequately as to what course he should take.

John is worried about his teen son who wants to experiment with drugs and alcohol but feels hamstrung by his father who while not passing judgment on this desire, has led a life of sobriety for fifteen years and by his very presence takes the “fun” out of the experimenting. It’s a dilemma that many drunks have experienced with their kids. Who wants a parent whose existence screams “don’t experiment or you’ll end up like me”? They would rather have a quiet partner as a parent, one who has no experiences to teach them.

So Nigel and I discussed the nature and origin of all of this ennui among our fellow drunks and we tried to put a face on the causes of these effects. First, having been raging drunks, we were always on the edge of life living a high risk and perhaps high reward lifestyle. As long as we were strung out on alcohol and drugs we were fine with taking risks, in business, in personal style, in driving and all manner of other behaviors most others would deem as anti-social and reckless.

Yet the intermittent reinforcement of high returns for risk taking solidified those acts and since non sobriety was the cause of our risk taking, its role in life was reinforced. This is the same dynamic that drives gambling.

But once we have undertook a sober existence, the associations of this behavior with drunkenness was unavoidable and we decided that risk taking was an unnecessary and unwanted threat to our sobriety so we eliminated these edgy behaviors to avoid the risk of falling back into drunken behaviors. So we developed a keen aversion to risk taking and we avoid risk like the plague. And we then accepted, rightly or wrongly that this existence must be the price to pay for sobriety and we became restless and discontented with our new life as we now know it.

But Nigel pointed out that the fear of becoming a recidivist sucks up the creative juices and clamps down the creative impulses. We want to remain in a psychically comfortable zone where we do not want to risk our sobriety on any behavior that would make us uncomfortable so we chose to remain placid, moderate and bored. But Nigel said that we, a group of very talented guys, should not be consumed by the fear of falling off the wagon because we may yet pursue risky deals if we know the risks and understand how to mitigate them. And if our fear prevents us from acting we must accept the consequence of being bored to death.

But taking the risk bull by the horns in life requires a vigilant eye and deep wellspring of strength of character. And ultimately the reward for taking that risk is the creation of something new, unique or better than things were prior to going creatively ballistic. If only we could coax our fears out of hiding in the closet into the light of a bolder, calmer us.

The truth is that we have become comfortable in our aversion to risk. And that has made us complacent, not wanting to rock our collective boats, our tranquility and serenity for fear of diving into the bottle again. It is a fine line between fear and folly. We have a healthy fear to avoid people, places and things that will expose us to taking up alcohol consumption again. And we are anxious for fear of once having extended ourselves out of our comfort zones that we will fall prey to those anxieties that led us to drink in the first place. But fearing that this will occur is unproductive, for it keeps active minds fallow.

And as our minds rest from planting too many ideas and activities we miss another imperative, to be engaged, aware and living a zestful life. Because the excitement that new ideas and processes provide makes us fully engaged with our families, society and with our own lives.
So the challenge for us, as Nigel counseled, is to strike out in new directions plying our intelligence in the pursuit of novel and interesting pursuits so that we never more have to complain that sobriety can only be manifest as an inevitably dour and dull existence.

Res October 24, 2010