Hello and it's going to be a good day? I suppose it depends on what you define as what is good, what is bad and what is ugly? One person's food is another person's poison… Every time I used to go into my favourite local bar, pub and restaurant… Smiles here every establishment which served drink could be my favourite! If I do not know what is right for me sometimes, how on earth could I possibly know what is right for you? I don't…
Courage to change, faith in doing the next right thing and confidence to keep on making mistakes. The phrase nothing is wasted in God's economy comes to mind. In other words when it comes to recovery and being able to stay in recovery, every experience of life has purpose. Even those nightmare times where drink drove me and I was driven to succeed and show no weakness in the world, they taught me about the addiction, not only to alcohol, the addiction to people, places and things. Until of course the only company I kept came in the bottle…
If we are sensitive to our surroundings and what is happening in the world, is it any wonder we can be sensitive and feel the pain of what is happening and that drink was a good anaesthetic to take the edge off reality? Every day there is tragedy, there is something happening somewhere which will upset us greatly. And if we have upset in our own lives, the world globally and locally can be very bleak. In recovery, the serenity prayer gives me the actions I can take, simply the can do and cannot do and learn the wisdom to know the difference with the situation and encounter. I love it when I go into supermarkets and chat with enlightened checkout assistants. Usually younger than me, quite a few if not the majority have heard the serenity prayer somewhere and it works for them very well. Always good to know that wisdom is being learned far sooner than I ever did back in the day about the basics of living…
The pursuit of excellence, being the best in something and achieving can be seen as virtuous ambitions. The only trouble with excellence is how we perceive it. If we become excellent in one area of life in the very best that we can be in this one area of life, what about the rest of it? Is it better to be a jack of all trades and master of none? Or is it better to be masterful in one area of life, and feel the emptiness and without lots of breadth and depth in all human endeavour?
The virtue of being masterful, it comes in many shapes and forms and it is not for me to decide what is right for you. Similarly, in our world where education of the young is being prescribed to the nth degree, it is very difficult to understand the purpose of shaping minds and testing them to near destruction. In a fast changing world, prescriptive curriculums and syllabuses simply torment rather than educate and free the individual to make choices based on the evidence of now. Open a door to opportunity and freedom of choice… Of course I could be wrong.
This emotional and spiritual life: learning the truth of now, the freedom of choice is contingent on current day conditions, as we learn what we can do and cannot do. And I'm grateful to be sober this morning, without a clue about what I'm going to do for the rest of the day. I'm not bored or agitated, and there are limits to what is possible. I'm grateful and not despondent. Not yet, but it is early in the day!
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