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What Democracy Looks Like

 I went to the yesterdays No Kings in America protest. And, even more amazing, my 89 year old Mother, who has never protested anything like this in her life, went with me. She has been politically active in her life. Always from the inside. She was, for example, part of the Sullivan County NH campaign committee for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Sullivan County campaign chair for him in 1980. So always within the system. Never from outside of it. For two hours she sat in a folding chair and, sometimes with a sign in front of her and sometimes no sign, waved at the people driving by who were honking and waving at us. Standing and walking hurts so her just walking from the car to where I set up her chair was painful and then walking back to the car after. I ran around talking to people and getting pieces of people's story, when not standing next to Mom saluting cars that were honking and waving. I was in the Army many moons ago and still know how to render the hand salute properly. After t...
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Empathy

  noun 1) the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the emotions, thoughts, or attitudes of another. She put an arm around her friend’s shoulders and stood by her in silent empathy. 2) the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself. By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self. (Thank you dictionary.com) For many years I was, and sometimes still can be, a very self centered person. Everything was always about me. Usually colored by my many resentments. I had exactly zero empathy, or any real identification, for other people. It was aways about my perception of things and how I thought that things affected me. As a friend of mine used to say, It is always about me and usually in the worst possible way. And it was always filtered through how I felt about it. Which was almost always in the most negative way possible to feel about things. As a result I could never have a...
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Both Sides Are NOT The Same

 I was talking with a person a few days ago about a variety of things. And in that the topic of the killing of a Right Wing Hate Speecher that has recently happened came up. And the person I was talking with said something along the lines of, There are a lot of people celebrating the death of NAME and I think that is messed up. After they had said their piece I stated, again, something along the lines of, I am one of those people. I think that this person reaped as they had sowed. That they had called for violence and death against anyone who they thought was different. And they got the thing that they had wished on others. They reaped as they had sowed. As a set up for the next piece of dialog, a few months ago there was a person who went into the home of a very famous politician in order to kill this person. When they could not find the politician they took the politicians spouse prisoner and then proceeded to beat this spouse almost to death with a hammer. So the next thing out ...
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What Does Fear Look Like

 As anyone who has followed my ramblings know I have been dealing with Fear my entire life. Or at least as far back as I can remember. And I can remember. For example, the earliest memory that I have I was less than a year old. I was in the backseat of an automobile. In the front seat two people, whom I knew were my Mother and Father, I knew their voices, arguing. About what who knows. What I do know is that I was afraid. Not because of what was said. I had no context yet for Language so the words, that I did not even understand that were words, meant nothing to me. It was the tone, the volume, the vibe, all of it was expressing what I now know as Anger and Fear. And that was the extent of any understanding. Way deep down inside where Language does not exist I Knew that this was bad, danger, etc. And I was afraid. I did not know yet that I was afraid. And again, deep inside where Language did not yet exist, I Knew that this was wrong, and I did not like it. And I am pretty sure tha...
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The Paradox Of Recovery

  And Life. Paradox: (Thank you Dictionary.com) 1) a statement that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. “Less is more” is a paradox often repeated in the arts and other fields. It is a paradox of healthy grief that we must work at it while surrendering to it. 2) any person, thing, or situation displaying an apparently contradictory nature. In the media the candidate was called a paradox—an unpopular populist. Synonyms:  riddle, anomaly, puzzle 3) a self-contradictory and false statement, especially one arising from seemingly acceptable premises and correct logical argument. 4) time paradox. 5) Also called  paradox illusion .  an optical illusion depicting an impossible object, often a two-dimensional figure that the viewer intuitively interprets as representing a three-dimensional one, but which cannot actually exist in three dimensions: brought to popular attention especially by the work of M. C. Escher. 6) Ar...
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Everything Happens For A Reason

I grew up in 'merica. Which means that the Christian Religion was a part of how things were. And are. And there were many times thru out my growing up years where I heard the above saying. A lot.  And for me that, like religion, just never worked. It never made sense to me. Just like religion never made sense to me. And I have heard it a lot in recovery as well. People keep saying "Well everything happens for a reason". And I find that irritating a hell. For me, when one says that, they are basically denying that they have any power in their life. That this "god" of theirs is responsible for everything and they have "no choice" in the matter. Because "everything happens for a reason" is coded speech for their "god" has willed it to be. According to all of the "sacred writings" that I have ever read, which includes the christian bible, we are  creatures created in our creators image with free will. Free Will. Which means we...
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Adapt and Thrive?

 Or Resist and Die? I was just recently on a webinar where the person speaking was talking about the new world that we are in. Where How we make an income is changing. And she said, "There are two types of people in times like this. Those who adapt and thrive, and those who resist and die". Unfortunately, I am not sure if that is the exact wording. I came and wrote it down while the webinar was still going on. And my memory got fuddled in the 15 seconds it took for me to open this up and write it. The presenter on this webinar was talking about the business world. I, rather automatically, shifted this out into the entire realm of life. Life as it is today. And here in the United States we are watching this go on in real time. We are seeing a Massive Reaction, Socially, Politically, Business, Religious, to a shift that is happening in this country. A large part of the population does not understand this shift, is scared of this shift, and is violently resisting this shift. Wha...
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Love Thy Neighbor As Thy Self

 Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39, and Mark 12:31 Let me start off by saying that I am neither Christian nor any other Religion. I do not believe in any god out there. I believe that a truly Spiritual life involves a lifetime journey inside ones self to get in touch with the Creator that we all are. And, I also grew up in these United States where the predominate religion is Christianity. And I was exposed to, and later studied, the christian bible for myself. And later on a whole bunch of "holy books" from other religions. The hypocrisy that I could see being practiced daily by the "true believers" around me helped me, as much as many other things, to get to where I am with my spiritual beliefs. I am not trying to argue with anyone, or try to convince you that I am right or correct, or that you are wrong and incorrect, just explaining so that you understand where I am coming from. And if you are offended by what I say then ok. I really don't care, although I do u...
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Defiance

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 When I was young I was in a state of defiance against everything. Occasionally loud. Usually quiet. My actions usually spoke much louder than I did. There was this Blacklight Poster that was around that I really identified with. It showed a mouse flipping off and eagle just before the bird's claws took the mouse. It was, to me, epic. It looked like this. I cannot find the one that I remember. This is close: The poster that I remember was from the viewpoint of just behind the mouse, literally on the mouse's back, and looking up at the bird and the Bird's Claws with the Mouse's Middle Finger in prominently displayed. And I really liked it. More importantly, I Identified with it. To give you an example of what defiance looked like for me, any of you that have read my previous stuff know this story. So here it is again. My Step Father decided that I should wash dishes after dinner every night. For some "reason" I took this as a massive imposition. And, I would st...
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The Dangers of Solitude

 Solitude is most definitely a double edged sword. And which side is cutting one depends entirely where one is in life. If one is in a place of Being Insecure, not in touch with Who They Are as a Human Being, and generally, not in every case, and maybe not even in the majority cases, when one is younger, then solitude can be a bad place. It will then be a place where every single mistake, every single time that one could have been a better human, every time that one felt bad about themselves, will be repeated on a loop thus reinforcing ones negative self image. Also, in my experience, every single slight, trick played on one, nasty remark, all the things that will make one mad, will also play on a loop. And ones stress level will go thru the roof and one is hating everyone and everything. So, one is either feeling extremely bad about who they are, or one is feeling the euphoria of negativity that in anger and hate. A very toxic mix. And there is also what a friend of mine called "...
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A Spiritual Vitamin Pill

 I was in a Zoom meeting today. And the speaker was just filled, overflowing with, Gratitude. It was coming out in everything that was there. The Voice, the Words, the Body Language, everything, was just exuding Gratitude. And Joy. So much Joy. And, while the words were important, and very effective in telling a story of addiction and recovery, it was everything else that conveyed the important message. That  not only is recovery possible, that recovery can be great. And I needed to remember that today. I have a lot of internal stuff going on and I am wrapped way too tight inside my own head. I could, and do, call it, getting lost in the weeds of life. And I forget how wonderful my life is. Especially in comparison to how it was the day I walked into my first meeting. And later, when I made the choice to stop using and try doing it someone else's way instead of my own. Along the way I have had many moments. Some Great, some Good, some Meh, some Ugh, and some Terrible. For all ...
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It's The System Stupid

In 1992 the the young Governor  of Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton, ran for the Democratic Nomination for President. He got it. And then he went on despite several nasty scandals, to win the Office of the President. Four years later he won re-election and thus was in office for eight years. Again, surviving some nasty scandals. During his first campaign, in 1992, he had an internal motto. He had it plastered all over his campaign headquarters. That motto was "It's the Economy stupid". It was a way to keep everyone focused on the theme of the campaign so they would not veer off of it to far. I have taken that and reworded it to keep us all focused on the main problem with our country now so we do not get lost in the weeds of the symptoms of the problem. And one of the most visible symptoms is the Orange Felon. And people feel that if we could just get rid of him then everything would go back to normal and we could undo the damage that he has done to our country. I real...
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Principles Before Personalities

 Here is another thing that we hear around Recovery meetings a lot. Principles Before Personalities. Seems pretty straight forward on the surface. And yet, like so many other things, more will be revealed. To begin, when I showed up in Recovery I had only one principle. Get mine. I was Self Centered and could only think about "My Needs". I had no Empathy or understanding that other people existed in their own lives and did not exist to cater to me. So the first thing that had to happen was that I needed to learn some new principles to live by. And the first ones that I needed to learn were ones that are directly mentioned in our Basic Text. It is in the part in the beginning of the chapter called "How It Works". And it says  "There is one thing more than anything else that will defeat us in our recovery; this is an attitude of indifference or intolerance toward spiritual principles. Three of these that are are indispensable are Honesty, Open-mindedness, and Wil...
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