THE CLOUDED LOOKING GLASS

THE CLOUDED LOOKING GLASS

I have been trying to assess just how I have grown in the past twenty months and I  fear that I have credited myself with a bit more growth in the stores of goodness than I should have;  Or perhaps thought that I had gained a greater level of calmness and quietude that I have a right to claim.

When I started my journey of recovery I was all too ready to admit the basest motives to my existence. I thought that every action was driven only by self will, self interest, self- fish interest. And to a major extent I think I have not over inflated  that initial assessment.  

When I first got sober I was so filled with guilt and shame  that I needed to admit to all kinds of behaviors because I was not sure which of those faults were true of me or those I only imagined were mine. I only knew that I thought I was guilty, or thinking that I acted as guiltily as I felt. And the easiest way to feel better and to be absolved of that guilt and shame was to admit all of it and confess it all and hope that an agency other than me would bestow a measure of dispensation so that I could begin to live with myself.  Finally!

One way to achieve some relief from the burden of guilt and shame was to humiliate oneself by admitting to one and all the demeaning, nasty and underhanded things that we have done to others and to ourselves. It is only through this act of contrition can we begin to achieve a modicum of humility.

For two years I lived alone and forswore a harried work environment and existed in an unchallenging habitat and in that minimally stimulative way was I able to heal and become a milder and gentler less reactive personality. Without people who knew what buttons of mine to press I could learn tolerance, patience and forbearance in situations which had previously set me into fits of anger and wrath.

I learned to act with  thoughtful composure and regard. I became less reactive. And under this tutelage I thought that I had learned humility. 

In the seventh step it is written that when we have learned to stop expecting that we are living our lives only for our wills to be fulfilled it is only then that we can begin to seek humility and in fact become humble. And it is only when we stop insisting that our prayers to God be answered for our own sakes and only hope that they be answered in the time and place of the choosing of the power greater than ourselves, can we begin to realize what humility means.  And then when I think that I have attained this new me, the old me insinuates itself back into my life.

So  I am trying to remember what I don’t want to remember. But flashes of my former self appear in the mirror of my daily life and I begin to wonder who was that?  Where did he come from? And then I remember the “claims” of erratic behavior from people about me in jobs during my past and of me wondering “did I really say that”? Who were they talking about?

It’s been two years since I last lived in my home, since I was asked to live and return to the family.  And while I am grappling with that move, cleaning out old papers, moving furniture, rearranging desks, setting up home offices, I rummage through the detritus of the past when I notice  my service record for a hospital at which I worked. In it I saw how I defended my actions during an incident long ago with people whom I can hardly remember.

And then just months later, another defense for some action which was found wanting. All of this coming on the heels of an admission of trouble with alcohol to a co-worker.  And in these letters of defense I bring up the notion of a “conspiracy” to get rid of me, from co-workers which from this distance of nearly nine years has the recognition of some truth.  The defenses are well written well defended and achingly familiar.

 But that is not the only truth that I see.

I see a desperate drunk, in the throes of denial, fighting and kicking to keep his head above water and all the while making excuses for his behavior by casting it as the shadow of the machinations of others’ Machiavellian plots.  But whatever the truth of the latter the non-admission of my alcoholism to myself, at the very least, kept me from dealing with my problem which led me to the deepest and most profound fall that I could have imagined but still did not see.

I am not happy with the me that I am seeing in that past. Just as I am not happy with the me that I am beginning to see crystallizing today.  And the me that I am not happy about is this curt, angry, self centered guy that used to be me years ago who I had thought I had left behind more than a year ago. And I cannot understand how that me started to return. Unless it is as a result of not being thoroughly honest with facing my character defects?

But I know that I am difficult, and curt and short of temper and impatient with people and yet I find it hard to share about my difficulties in dealing with people in a public forum, especially when nobody has seen that side of me.

 And I am beginning to wonder just why that is? Why has my cultivated equanimity started to fail after so long just because I am on the cusp of returning home to my family? Is this really the reason for  this happening?

For this is the situation that I am now in the process of returning to.  And it is interesting, if a bit disturbing,  to note that I should find that my behavior is becoming more “restless, irritable and discontent” the closer I get to returning to the home.  After all, I have not had to live with anyone for the better part of two years now; and with that I have not had to answer to another’s quirks, desires, complaining. I haven’t had to attend to anyone else’s schedules.

And despite the fact that I arise at 5:30 AM and go to sleep at about 11:00 PM daily, I do not have to be present for anyone else, just me. So this new life, or rather this return to the old life, is going to take some re-education and some reinstitution of patience governors.  Attention will have to be paid to others around me as I have not been doing for quite some time.

So whereas I had thought that I had achieved a level of composure and tranquility, it may all have been a temporary mirage only now becoming clear as I return to a more normative reality.

It is time to dig for as much humility as can be gleaned from the seventh step as is possible. I cannot pray for a result and expect that it will be granted. That is not the way it works. I can only pray that I can let things happen and that I can get out of my own way as they do happen so that I don’t ruin everything.  The reflection I thought I saw in the mirror was a mirage, a mirage of a future based on a false start.  It was not wrong, just a different path, but one I am not on anymore and I need to adjust.

I can no longer act upon the reflection that I thought I saw in the mirror but must answer to the new and harder realities as seen by the new/old people in my life.

Res 9/13/11

Remarking Upon Fortune

Remarking Upon Fortune

In the midst of more than a turbulent enough life I forget to take pause and notice the things in my life that are not the events that shake mountains and move nations to great and heinous deeds. But they pass for ordinary and routine events in mine and the lives of ordinary people.

So when I normally mark and remark about the lives of folks who for reasons known best to them and their demons, I spend time in these pages just speaking about how they take up room in my head. But daily I see and am enjoined by people who are the embodiments of success and joy as they day by day place one foot in front of another and just stay sober with great and small efforts on their parts.

And yesterday, after not seeing Oren for about two months, he appeared at our beginner’s meeting to claim his one year coin. What a joy! Quietly but insistently and bravely he came day in and day out.

When asked how he did it he remarked that it wasn’t a quiet year for him despite the fact that he was a quiet participant. After all, after a marriage of 39 years he divorced, his job circumstances had diminished, if not tanked, and he had been forced to sell the house of a decade or more and move into an apartment in a town more than twenty miles from where he was used to staying, into a “retirement” community. A community named for a position in life that he hardly felt qualified to contemplate, in spirit if not in age.

Oren is a larger than life man, with a larger than life heart but a quiet demeanor.  He always had doubts as to how firm his grip was on his own sobriety. He would repeatedly say to me in that calm voice of his that he often wondered whether he could maintain his sobriety. And he said this as an offhand comparison to those AA’s with a lot of time under their belts often in wonderment as to how they were able to stash away so much time in the face of all that worry, against all that fear and trouble.

We would compare notes on our lives, both of us professional men, with long marriages, 2.5 children, a colonial house, lone drinkers for long periods of time, successful in our own different yet similar ways. 

Then out of the blue, a year ago January, his wife says one morning, “we need to get a divorce”.

“If we had been living the life of Riley, this would have been stupefying, but of course, this did not come as a surprise. In fact, it came as somewhat of a relief from all the tense silences of the past year where things were left ‘unsaid’”.

And I told Oren that this scenario was similar to mine in that one day about three years ago my wife insisted that we had to separate. Where that led me was on a spiral that landed me in an almost mortal health crash a year later.  For Oren, after some determined drinking, he thought that the only solution for him was to get sober and that September, last year, he stepped into our meeting on the 26^th  of this month.

He determined to do ninety meetings in ninety days and during that time I got to know him a bit. And as the year ended and my one year anniversary came around, we started to go out to breakfast after our meetings and began our ‘meetings after the meetings’, the kind of AA substance that is at the heart of the program to keep you sober. Not because it teaches sobriety any better, but it allows others into your life so that they can begin to learn who you are, learn what to expect of you and from you; assess your character, as it were, and learn your moods to know when you are off and on the beam.

It is by gaining that level of familiarity that we begin to entrust ourselves to others so that even before we may notice when we are veering off the sober road, others may begin to be aware of mood, and behavior changes. They will warn us, or make us aware that our attitudes literally may need adjustment.

So I forget that there are daily successes that for all their banality should be paid attention to.  Because in AA they need to be recognized; for in here they are rare enough events.  The statistics, I am told are really bad. That if you are to look at any particular group of detoxification unit graduates, you will find that perhaps one in twenty will succeed in getting sober.

That is a pretty dismal figure.  But we in AA tend to look at it a different way. Because those successes are the result of following a program which we know works, and for those who follow that program, the success rate is 100%.  So if you leave a detox unit and join an AA group and then go to a meeting a day, get a sponsor and follow the twelve step program, there is an almost one hundred per cent success rate.

So I note that during the past year Jake now has nine months, Candice, six.  Debbie has almost reached her third month and Stacey went off with her husband to Vermont to celebrate the seventh month of her sobriety back after being out of the program for five years.

Just the other day Phil told us his story how, one year after he finally sobered up, he left a wrecked life behind him.  To the untrained ear that may sound horrible but to us it is a reaffirmation of who we are and the successes we have become. We know where we have been and celebrate where we are going to.

There is no greatness in our everyday slog toward sobriety. But there is nobility in the effort to stay sober in the measured way that we achieve it, one step at a time, inch by inch, day by day, incrementally. We are sure in the knowledge that at any time that we feel that the security of our sobriety is challenged, we can start our twenty four hour day over again.

We are not bound by the quotidian biological clock to measure our 24 hour periods.  Like commandos, we can reset our mission clocks to any time that we need to synchronize it in order to accomplish our goal.  And we are clear what that goal is for today and for tomorrow. As for next year, we can take care of that another time.

©  res 9/27/11

ADAGIOS (OR FRACTURED APHORISMS)

I recently came across these "Adagios" fractured adages that I have been conjuring for the past ten years. I cannot remember the last time that I actually added to this list but it wasn't ten years ago but closer to three. They are somewhat silly but in the spirit of the AA slogans, I thought I would contribute some wry observations that only an alcoholic mind could make.

I hope you enjoy them.

Dr. Bob

ADAGIOS (Or Fractured Aphorisms)

1.    If taking things to the next level means that I have to climb a ladder, Jack Welch will not hire me.

2.    There are times when life is great, but don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

3.    When my ship comes in it will be a dinghy.

4.    Don’t monkey around something intelligent might happen.

5.    I live to serve, but I’m usually the dish.

6.    When Irish eyes are shining, there are usually some empty glasses around.

7.    A good day for me is a bad day for the bottom line.

8.    A bad day for me is a good day for the bottom line.

9.    There’s no business like show business unless you are sane.

10. A water buffalo is an oxy moron.

11. Living on the edge is fine if you don’t sharpen the blade.

12. D’is-ability is what your mother objected to all along.

13. Strike a blow for Liberty, but don’t let her enjoy it.

14. He, who laughs last, laughs last.

15. When time is of the essence, it usually stinks.

16. I try to get in on the ground floor, but usually wind up in the basement.

17. You can’t always get what you want, and you usually don’t.

18. Being first isn’t everything, but that’s just the point of view of the winner.

19. Life may be just a bowl of cherries, but I prefer pozole.

20. If variety is the spice of life, mine is getting too hot to handle.

21. Strike while the iron is hot or you’ll never get the wrinkles out.

22. A stitch in time is usually a pain in the side.

23. If the plot is thickening, someone added cornstarch.

24. The chance of a lifetime is usually something terminal.

25. Chance favors the prepared mind, but who has all that time for cooking?

26. Adultery is only good for pulpwood.

27. Justice may be blind, but it often can’t hear either.

28. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of petty minds, but at least you get to hear the same tune played the same way twice.

29. Not everyone can be a genius, but you’d never know to hear my mother talk.

30. To hear my mother talk is to listen to a damaged record.

31. If all the pain in the world were concentrated in a small box, my mother would have a duplicate.

32. Don’t get angry get pissed!

33. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, back to back and a belly to a belly.

34. She lives today to tell tomorrow what happened yesterday.

35. If it ain’t broke, it ain’t been used.

36. To use it is to lose it.

37. When the going gets tough, give up.

38. When the enemy’s at the gate, start fiddling.

39. If you can’t beat ‘em, stir thoroughly.

40. Silence is golden, invisibility priceless.

41. Many hands make the till disappear faster.

42. If I had a penny for every time I heard that, I’d be penny foolish.

43. It takes only 15 muscles to smile but doesn’t help you when you want to smack someone.

44. Oil and water are immiscible evidence.

45. Extremism in the defense of liberty is extreme.

46. To be or not to be, seems like a no win situation.

47. Nice guys finish last because the badies start at the tape.

48. You can’t be in two places at once, but that depends what the definition of be, be.

49. The secret to success is lying, cheating and avoiding honest work.

50. Hebonics is the ability to distinguish between the schlemiel and the schlimazel.

51. Think of it as having a leg up instead of one foot in the grave.

52. If I ever get my just desserts, it will have to be made with Equal.

53. Being the odd man out is a benefit in a Gay bar.

54. One carpe/diem is good for the sole and the heart.

55. Every cloud has a vapor lining.

56. Behind every cloud, things really are as bleak as they seem.

57. Who snuffed the light at the end of the tunnel?

58. It’s always darkest just when there’s no sun out.

59. Time cures everything, even life.

60. No news is no news.

61. Bad news for the prisoner is a treat for the executioner.

62. There are prevarications, damned mendacities and Gaussian curves.

63. If you can’t beat ‘em, shoot ‘em.

64. The first will be last… but the first will have already changed the finish line.

65. The meek shall inherit the earth after the strong rape, pillage and abandon it.

66. My time will come, I hope before I pass on.

67. Beauty is only skin deep – try saying that the bear skin rug on the floor.

68. You can’t tell a book by its cover, but the title may give you a clue.

69. If at first you don’t succeed, the tough get going.

70. When you think all is lost, things get just a little worse.

71. Do unto others the way you would have others unto you do, to undo to you what you had done.

72. You can be all things to nobody.

73. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but don’t tell that to your wife.

74. You find hope in the oddest places, but it doesn’t help when you’re beyond desperation.

75. An apple a day eventually presents you with a worm.

76. The best and the brightest often do the worst and the dumbest.

77. When opportunity knocks, confirm the source of the sulphurous smell.

78. You can bring a bandersnatch to brillig, but you can’t make him eat a carpenter.

79. The name of the game is win; the means is sin.

80. Rhinoplasty is for nosey people.

81. Palatoplasty is for blabbermouths.

82. Scotchoplasty is for serious drinkers.

83. Millennial thoughts are a long time coming.

84. The Second Coming is a deep millennial thought.

85. If you were me, you wouldn’t be silly enough to be writing these sadages.

86. My idea of a bull’s eye is the calm before the storm.

87. There are too many bad jokes and I know most of them.

88. If time heals all wounds, why am I still changing the bandages.

89. The best laid plans of mice and men usually wind up with a slap in the face.

90. A fiver for your thoughts – inflation you know.

91. The better part of valor is survival.

92. If army intelligence is an oxymoron, what kind of moron am I?

93. The night is always darkest when there is no light.

94. My finest hour was sixty seconds long.

95. When, in the course of human events, you’re given liberty or given death, they will say that this was their finest hour; conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men (not women, not slaves and not non-property holders) are created equal.  We are gathered here today to see if any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long fear itself.  But be wary of the military industrial complex.  And I am not a crook, depending what the definition of crook is. And to this we pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

96. Honesty is the best policy.  I could open up an insurance company.

97. The proof of the kugle is in schmaltz.

98. Why is it that when things are at their very worst, we blithely say that it’s all for the best?

99. Ask not what you can do for your country, ask to whom you can do it.

100       (Stolen)  I wouldn’t mind time flying by as long as it didn’t insist on dragging me along with it.

101       Put yourself in my shoes, then you’ll know how painful corns are!

102       If you can’t understand another until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes, what enlightenment is there to be mined if you walked two?

103       If the real action is where the leather meets the floor, is there any hope for peasants?

104   But if the action is where the rubber meets the road, Mexican camposinos      will do  very well with their guaraches.                     

104       No man is an island, but you could make do with a woman of the female persuasion.

105       A bird in hand usually leaves a mess.

106       A friend in need usually requires a contract.

107       Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but sometimes he needs corrective lenses.

108       Good fences make good neighbors, provided they split the cost.

109       If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear the fall, does any one care?

110       With age comes wisdom.  So who’s responsible for Sharon and Arafat?

111       Age is honorable, youth is noble, and I am crotchety.

112       All’s well that ends well but all that begins well is, well, not always ending well.

113       Whoever said that beggars should not be choosy, hasn’t seen the panhandlers in San Francisco.

114       Better late than never, except for your funeral.

115       Necessity is a real mother.

116       There’s many a slurp between the cup and the lip.

117       If a conservative is a mugged liberal, is a liberal a conservative whose HMO has denied service?

118       There are reasons for everything, but explanations for few.

119       Work deferred is work never done.

120       Is that bad?

121       It always is a puzzlement, when I see two boys who are staying with me, act better than their parents.

122       I don’t think I can go on and on and on and on and on…..

123       A lawyer who treats himself has a fool for a doctor.

124       If you’re going to set the world on fire, better bring some matches.

125       If this were a perfect world, it would be boring.

126       When things are happening all around you, it’s called life.

127       Life happens. Not always neat, not always clean, not always recognizable.

128       The love of a good woman is worth at least two men.

129       The value of the love of a good woman depends on your point of view.

130       The course of true love never did run smooth; sometimes it’s worth it not to be so reality based.

131       Leading glass is a plumb of a job.

132       If I had to rely on learned knowledge, I would be attending remedial classes.

133       I always thought that to be a good doctor was to be a good diagnostician; I very quickly learned that the only thing that matters is whether the patient likes you.

RES 7/2/2001 ©