New Year, Old Questions
Another new year rolls around. Things in the year past were pretty good, on the scale of years I've had in the thirty-two I've lived and the twenty-seven or so I can remember. In fact, it was a good year all around. Good, because essentially nothing happened. I have the same job I started the year with, the same room mate, the same girlfriend. My address changed, but that's a relatively small thing in my world, something that has happened pretty often and it didn't involve a change in cities and an upheaval of my entire life. My mode of transport changed, first from bike and bus to scooter (an absolutely wonderful mode of transport, and I might add that I've begun a love affair with two wheeled transport which I hope doesn't end until I'm too old and hindered by physical inability to ride), and the process of getting my license back has made leaps and bounds, hopefully coming to full circle tomorrow when I go to take the written knowledge and the actual road skills exams. 2008 was a year for the record books in my life, simply because very little happened. It seems the boring and unassuming life I was so terrified of as a teenager and younger adult is nothing to be afraid of after all, in fact, it's much more satisfying and contentment inducing than I could have possibly thought. It's good to be wrong sometimes.
So, most things have remained the same. Along with the list of things which has remained the same are some of the more intangible things, the things which in so many ways, are major parts of the whole of living for me. I still have questions, dozens, probably hundreds, and most of those remain either unanswered or quietly twittering in the background of my consciousness, asking to be re-examined. To a degree, this has resulted in my creating a greater distance between myself and the 12 Step recovery community I had made a home of for four or five years. Certainty seems to be a commodity and a currency there, and I have little of it in more ways than not. My only real certainty lies in my own moral framework, which seems to be very different from the majority of people I have come into contact with there, and those whom I have found that common ground with seem to be moving away, in the literal or metaphorical sense. The past year has brought one rather significant change. I find myself more comfortable and more at ease with people who have no experience with the recovery community and who don't have so many of the assumptions about other people which are a part of that community. Which is to say when I meet people who are not members of the recovery community, they don't immediately assume they know anything about me, which has come to be the way I tend to approach most other people. I don't really tend to assume I know much of anything about people I meet, and it's a pretty cool process in getting to know other people and finding out what kind of interesting facets they have to their personalities, perspectives and general approach to living. It seems the recovery community skips a good deal of that by assuming what might actually be or might not actually be true. See my past blogs concerning romantic relationships within the recovery community for examples of this.
One of the other things is the God issue. Possibly lucky for me or possibly not (we have yet to see), this is a question which is now being considered on a much larger scale, within society the whole of society which we live in, and isn't relegated to the varieties of religious and spiritual organizations within that society. I've come to realize I'm an agnostic by comparison. I have a pretty profound faith that something else seems to be going on here, but very little confidence or certainty in either my ability to comprehend much of it or that any assumptions or beliefs I have related to this are any more correct than anyone else. It's kind of like asking someone how hot their Thai food is. To me, it might not be so hot (considering my penchant for spicy foods, my wop ancestry makes for a high tolerance), but to someone else, my girlfriend for example (pot roasts and meatloaf growing up, didn't get her accustomed to it), it might seem more like an exercise in self punishment. Experience has taught me that in this particular aspect of my life, the less I claim to know, the better off I am. Particularly in the God arena, when I'm saddled with much certainty, I'm also usually engaged in active and rampaging assholism. It's a case of the difference between "I know" and "I think". There's also a certain language to all of it which is portends things I can't really find my way to either believing or even making much sense of. A deity, which is somehow inherently interested in my personal growth and well being, seems to make little to no sense, at all. I just can't wrap my head around this. Something, which seems to be an inextrcable part of harmony, peace, altruism and an interest in the well being of the whole and which human beings seem to instinctually respond to, this makes some sense to me, but that's about as far as I get. And for me, because it seems to make sense, doesn't mean I'm willing to defend the idea or try to convince anyone else of it either. It means with the experience and information I have, this is what seems to stick out. I could very well be wrong. Maybe this is something which I tell myself to make myself feel better. Maybe this is something which helps to suggest there could actually be some order in a world which is actually nothing more than a chaotic string of random moments and events. These things are as possible to me as there being something more here. It just seems that the something more idea has been gained a good deal more experiential evidence. On the other hand, the idea of a Giant Omniscient Omnipotus in the Sky Evermore, meeting out jugment, justice, love, compassion, understanding or much of anything else, seems entirely ludicrous to me. Should that be true, I just can't see how humanity has made it this far without being smited with some flood or rain of fire or plague or some other really nasty thing the Omniputus has seen fit to bolt down on us due to the rampant and indefatigable asshattery we've demonstrated over the course of our existence. That thing would have summarily removed us thousands of years ago, and probably started again with some new species or idea of it's own making and creation. For me, that GOOSE is cooked, and it seems a good deal of the recovery community seems pretty deeply inurred to these ideas. I'm not throwing stones here, I'm not saying anyone who believes this is wrong or bad or stupid. I'm just saying it's something I don't agree with, and there's something to the language of the twelve step recovery community which comes across in terms of US and THEM in terms of this stuff. There's a certain fundamentalist wing of the recovery community which is particularly useless, and for which I've lost basically all respect, and therefore, patience. It's not the recovery community specifically, but fundamentalism in just about all it's forms. Politically, spiritually, morally, all of them, fundamentalists are just not people I play well with. There are some things I believe to be fundamentally true, but I'm aware these things are fundamentally true for or to me, and I've lost all desire to impinge those things on anyone else. In fact, I'm more than willing to admit, those things may not be fundamentally true to anyone else. I actually like the fact that this is true. Some of the most important and FUNDAMENTALLY LIFE CHANGING experiences I've had have been as a result of this. It's fucking good thing we don't all agree. When too large a group of people agree on something, with little to no resistance or dissent from within their own community, bad shit happens. Holocausts, slavery, internment camps, genocides, that kind of bad shit. And I think at the end of the day, that's what tends to irk me most about the fundamentalist wing of the recovery community, a desire to stomp out or completely disenfranchise and disengage from anyone or anything which does show any degree of resistance or dissent to their particular perspective and suggestions. I'm a big believer, among the biggest of believers, in the idea that everyone has the right to make their own decisions, and choose their own actions, the fundamentalists included. I'm not however very comfortable with rubbing elbows with people who really just want to see me miserable, and drunk, probably dead or dying simply so they can sit on the throne of their own righteousness and pat themselves on the back for just how right they were. Me, personally, I'd rather be wrong and see someone live happily and contentedly. I speak very much from experience when describing this, something I am truly not proud of, and one of the few things I would do differently should I somehow be able to go back in time and change things. I think the best I can do to make those things right is to not take part in them any further, and to be a much more moderated voice in the world I live in. I do have some guilt on that one.
Life goes on though, interestingly enough. I go to very few meetings, except to see old friends who've returned home for the holidays, and I am grateful for this. For the first time in my life, I actually look forward to the holidays, because of this reason exactly. I'm happy they're over. The added running about is taxing, but I have enjoyed them while they are here the last two years. I don't spend days worrying over the state of my spiritual well being. I think about whether I'm being an asshat, and if I am, I try to correct that behavior to fit more with both my own moral framework and the good of the people around me, and then I move on. It's no longer a symptom of some great, deeply seated spiritual or psychological problem which can only be addressed through the magical powers of a room full of one specific set of people who are more able to provide me some connection to whatever more it is that seems to be going on here. I have no doubt that was true when I first stumbled into the twelve step community, many deep seated spiritual and psychological issues were at work, and making life pretty fucking hard. At some point though, I think the eminent search for and assumption of those issues at work in all things in my life became it's own deap seated spiritual and psychological issue. Not to mention my own experience rubbing elbows with and trying on some of that exact fundamentalism, the result of which has become my distaste for it in all of it's forms.
I'm just another guy now. I'm just some schmuck who shows up for work, does his best, has troubles, gets frustrated, looks for more out of life, finds it sometimes, and sometimes finds I'm looking for more or trying to get more in some really ludicrous fashion. I'm just another nobody these days, not really special in much of any way. I don't drink, which in some situations presents itself as a bit of difference, but on the whole, is no big deal either. Most people tend to be perfectly willing to let me be on the question once I suggest it's been a problem for me in the past. I have different problems now. I have learning problems. There's a whole slew of shit I have to learn. More often than not, I'm pretty into the learning thing, but sometimes, not really. Sometimes I just want a Cherry Coke, peanuts, ice cream, Thai food and really good escapist entertainment. But for more hours of the day than not these days, I tend to be pretty up for the whole learning thing. There's a whole new set of things for me to learn in the coming year. How do I meet deadlines for stuff? What does that mean on a day to day basis? How do I figure out how to do the small, less fun things, which are an essential part of reaching the dreams which this second chance at life have made available? How do I become more disciplined in these terms and still enjoy the life I have? I know how to get up and go to work, every day now. I know how to fulfill commitments. I know how to take the greater whole of the community I'm existing in as part of my decision making process, be that the people I work with, the place I live or otherwise. These things have led to me feeling better about myself than I probably ever have and they've given me more confidence than I've probably ever had. I actually like them, even though I don't always like doing them. I'm getting pretty good at keeping the assholism in check these days. It certainly still pipes up in my head, but I tend to laugh at it more often than not. It's inherently ridiculous, and laughing at it really seems to be the best thing I can do about it. The laughter keeps me going. It keeps me walking toward the things I want my life to be about. It keeps the cynicism from becoming too hard and too strong. I get to keep believing there are things in life worth doing and there are things in life worth trying to work toward, and for me, this is an extremely essential component.
Life is so much more simple these days, and this, I really, really, really, fucking like. I do miss some things about the twelve step community on ocassion. I miss being right there in the front row, trying to help someone find their way out of the lunacy they're struggling with, and seeing them start to emerge. You don't find that in many places in life. I've got some things to do, taking care of myself and the people I love, in a much more practical sense, for a little while, but if for no other reason, I do see myself taking more time for that at some point in the future. In the past year, it just became a question of trying to really do some things to better myself and my own life or continuing to follow the suggested path of the recovery community and hating them because I was doing it, because I was essentially afraid. I miss hanging out and laughing at the totally ridiculous and innapropriate nature of who some of those people were, because I am so much the same kind of ridiculous and innapropriate. I like words like asshat, fuckoffery and smegma. I like to hear people say them in a room full of other people who may or may not like them just as much. I like to say them in those same context. I like bad movies, good people and strange shit altogether. Gentrification sucks. And to some degree, I think that's part of what's happened to the community I entered. It's not the same community I entered anymore. These are people who neither need nor want my help or input, and rightfully so. It has just seemed over the last year that it was time to get about living life and putting to use the things I've learned instead of monkeying around and waiting for the next big epiphany or the next pedestal to try and ascend. I kind of like life in the trenches of normalcy, amazing as it is to even me when I admit it.
So, most things have remained the same. Along with the list of things which has remained the same are some of the more intangible things, the things which in so many ways, are major parts of the whole of living for me. I still have questions, dozens, probably hundreds, and most of those remain either unanswered or quietly twittering in the background of my consciousness, asking to be re-examined. To a degree, this has resulted in my creating a greater distance between myself and the 12 Step recovery community I had made a home of for four or five years. Certainty seems to be a commodity and a currency there, and I have little of it in more ways than not. My only real certainty lies in my own moral framework, which seems to be very different from the majority of people I have come into contact with there, and those whom I have found that common ground with seem to be moving away, in the literal or metaphorical sense. The past year has brought one rather significant change. I find myself more comfortable and more at ease with people who have no experience with the recovery community and who don't have so many of the assumptions about other people which are a part of that community. Which is to say when I meet people who are not members of the recovery community, they don't immediately assume they know anything about me, which has come to be the way I tend to approach most other people. I don't really tend to assume I know much of anything about people I meet, and it's a pretty cool process in getting to know other people and finding out what kind of interesting facets they have to their personalities, perspectives and general approach to living. It seems the recovery community skips a good deal of that by assuming what might actually be or might not actually be true. See my past blogs concerning romantic relationships within the recovery community for examples of this.
One of the other things is the God issue. Possibly lucky for me or possibly not (we have yet to see), this is a question which is now being considered on a much larger scale, within society the whole of society which we live in, and isn't relegated to the varieties of religious and spiritual organizations within that society. I've come to realize I'm an agnostic by comparison. I have a pretty profound faith that something else seems to be going on here, but very little confidence or certainty in either my ability to comprehend much of it or that any assumptions or beliefs I have related to this are any more correct than anyone else. It's kind of like asking someone how hot their Thai food is. To me, it might not be so hot (considering my penchant for spicy foods, my wop ancestry makes for a high tolerance), but to someone else, my girlfriend for example (pot roasts and meatloaf growing up, didn't get her accustomed to it), it might seem more like an exercise in self punishment. Experience has taught me that in this particular aspect of my life, the less I claim to know, the better off I am. Particularly in the God arena, when I'm saddled with much certainty, I'm also usually engaged in active and rampaging assholism. It's a case of the difference between "I know" and "I think". There's also a certain language to all of it which is portends things I can't really find my way to either believing or even making much sense of. A deity, which is somehow inherently interested in my personal growth and well being, seems to make little to no sense, at all. I just can't wrap my head around this. Something, which seems to be an inextrcable part of harmony, peace, altruism and an interest in the well being of the whole and which human beings seem to instinctually respond to, this makes some sense to me, but that's about as far as I get. And for me, because it seems to make sense, doesn't mean I'm willing to defend the idea or try to convince anyone else of it either. It means with the experience and information I have, this is what seems to stick out. I could very well be wrong. Maybe this is something which I tell myself to make myself feel better. Maybe this is something which helps to suggest there could actually be some order in a world which is actually nothing more than a chaotic string of random moments and events. These things are as possible to me as there being something more here. It just seems that the something more idea has been gained a good deal more experiential evidence. On the other hand, the idea of a Giant Omniscient Omnipotus in the Sky Evermore, meeting out jugment, justice, love, compassion, understanding or much of anything else, seems entirely ludicrous to me. Should that be true, I just can't see how humanity has made it this far without being smited with some flood or rain of fire or plague or some other really nasty thing the Omniputus has seen fit to bolt down on us due to the rampant and indefatigable asshattery we've demonstrated over the course of our existence. That thing would have summarily removed us thousands of years ago, and probably started again with some new species or idea of it's own making and creation. For me, that GOOSE is cooked, and it seems a good deal of the recovery community seems pretty deeply inurred to these ideas. I'm not throwing stones here, I'm not saying anyone who believes this is wrong or bad or stupid. I'm just saying it's something I don't agree with, and there's something to the language of the twelve step recovery community which comes across in terms of US and THEM in terms of this stuff. There's a certain fundamentalist wing of the recovery community which is particularly useless, and for which I've lost basically all respect, and therefore, patience. It's not the recovery community specifically, but fundamentalism in just about all it's forms. Politically, spiritually, morally, all of them, fundamentalists are just not people I play well with. There are some things I believe to be fundamentally true, but I'm aware these things are fundamentally true for or to me, and I've lost all desire to impinge those things on anyone else. In fact, I'm more than willing to admit, those things may not be fundamentally true to anyone else. I actually like the fact that this is true. Some of the most important and FUNDAMENTALLY LIFE CHANGING experiences I've had have been as a result of this. It's fucking good thing we don't all agree. When too large a group of people agree on something, with little to no resistance or dissent from within their own community, bad shit happens. Holocausts, slavery, internment camps, genocides, that kind of bad shit. And I think at the end of the day, that's what tends to irk me most about the fundamentalist wing of the recovery community, a desire to stomp out or completely disenfranchise and disengage from anyone or anything which does show any degree of resistance or dissent to their particular perspective and suggestions. I'm a big believer, among the biggest of believers, in the idea that everyone has the right to make their own decisions, and choose their own actions, the fundamentalists included. I'm not however very comfortable with rubbing elbows with people who really just want to see me miserable, and drunk, probably dead or dying simply so they can sit on the throne of their own righteousness and pat themselves on the back for just how right they were. Me, personally, I'd rather be wrong and see someone live happily and contentedly. I speak very much from experience when describing this, something I am truly not proud of, and one of the few things I would do differently should I somehow be able to go back in time and change things. I think the best I can do to make those things right is to not take part in them any further, and to be a much more moderated voice in the world I live in. I do have some guilt on that one.
Life goes on though, interestingly enough. I go to very few meetings, except to see old friends who've returned home for the holidays, and I am grateful for this. For the first time in my life, I actually look forward to the holidays, because of this reason exactly. I'm happy they're over. The added running about is taxing, but I have enjoyed them while they are here the last two years. I don't spend days worrying over the state of my spiritual well being. I think about whether I'm being an asshat, and if I am, I try to correct that behavior to fit more with both my own moral framework and the good of the people around me, and then I move on. It's no longer a symptom of some great, deeply seated spiritual or psychological problem which can only be addressed through the magical powers of a room full of one specific set of people who are more able to provide me some connection to whatever more it is that seems to be going on here. I have no doubt that was true when I first stumbled into the twelve step community, many deep seated spiritual and psychological issues were at work, and making life pretty fucking hard. At some point though, I think the eminent search for and assumption of those issues at work in all things in my life became it's own deap seated spiritual and psychological issue. Not to mention my own experience rubbing elbows with and trying on some of that exact fundamentalism, the result of which has become my distaste for it in all of it's forms.
I'm just another guy now. I'm just some schmuck who shows up for work, does his best, has troubles, gets frustrated, looks for more out of life, finds it sometimes, and sometimes finds I'm looking for more or trying to get more in some really ludicrous fashion. I'm just another nobody these days, not really special in much of any way. I don't drink, which in some situations presents itself as a bit of difference, but on the whole, is no big deal either. Most people tend to be perfectly willing to let me be on the question once I suggest it's been a problem for me in the past. I have different problems now. I have learning problems. There's a whole slew of shit I have to learn. More often than not, I'm pretty into the learning thing, but sometimes, not really. Sometimes I just want a Cherry Coke, peanuts, ice cream, Thai food and really good escapist entertainment. But for more hours of the day than not these days, I tend to be pretty up for the whole learning thing. There's a whole new set of things for me to learn in the coming year. How do I meet deadlines for stuff? What does that mean on a day to day basis? How do I figure out how to do the small, less fun things, which are an essential part of reaching the dreams which this second chance at life have made available? How do I become more disciplined in these terms and still enjoy the life I have? I know how to get up and go to work, every day now. I know how to fulfill commitments. I know how to take the greater whole of the community I'm existing in as part of my decision making process, be that the people I work with, the place I live or otherwise. These things have led to me feeling better about myself than I probably ever have and they've given me more confidence than I've probably ever had. I actually like them, even though I don't always like doing them. I'm getting pretty good at keeping the assholism in check these days. It certainly still pipes up in my head, but I tend to laugh at it more often than not. It's inherently ridiculous, and laughing at it really seems to be the best thing I can do about it. The laughter keeps me going. It keeps me walking toward the things I want my life to be about. It keeps the cynicism from becoming too hard and too strong. I get to keep believing there are things in life worth doing and there are things in life worth trying to work toward, and for me, this is an extremely essential component.
Life is so much more simple these days, and this, I really, really, really, fucking like. I do miss some things about the twelve step community on ocassion. I miss being right there in the front row, trying to help someone find their way out of the lunacy they're struggling with, and seeing them start to emerge. You don't find that in many places in life. I've got some things to do, taking care of myself and the people I love, in a much more practical sense, for a little while, but if for no other reason, I do see myself taking more time for that at some point in the future. In the past year, it just became a question of trying to really do some things to better myself and my own life or continuing to follow the suggested path of the recovery community and hating them because I was doing it, because I was essentially afraid. I miss hanging out and laughing at the totally ridiculous and innapropriate nature of who some of those people were, because I am so much the same kind of ridiculous and innapropriate. I like words like asshat, fuckoffery and smegma. I like to hear people say them in a room full of other people who may or may not like them just as much. I like to say them in those same context. I like bad movies, good people and strange shit altogether. Gentrification sucks. And to some degree, I think that's part of what's happened to the community I entered. It's not the same community I entered anymore. These are people who neither need nor want my help or input, and rightfully so. It has just seemed over the last year that it was time to get about living life and putting to use the things I've learned instead of monkeying around and waiting for the next big epiphany or the next pedestal to try and ascend. I kind of like life in the trenches of normalcy, amazing as it is to even me when I admit it.