PS - There is no Gravity -- Life just sucks!

Now, that doesn't sound like a very good start for the first blogging in 3 months, but please bear with me, it really might not turn out that way! Just for the record, in the last 2 months, I've been through preparing for Board Re-Certification, Winter, Mardi Gras in my hometown, Studying for the first time in 10 years, a 7 day whirlwind tour of marketing and education through the northeast, along with my first stroll down Broadway (BTW, you MUST see "Wicked: The Musical") the birth of my 5th grandchild and life in general. So, if I'm remiss and behind, to quote Steve Martin on SNL, "EXCUUUUUUUUUUUSE me!"

This week, I appeared on Facebook at the urging of several colleagues and family members. To my pleasure and surprise, I heard from many, many friends and a couple of very old special memories. One in particular taught me a new lesson: The definition of serenity. I got a hit on Facebook from a name I recommended. Let's call him Matt, for convenience. I recognized the name immediately, since his last name was NOT a typical Cajun name and one that stood out. What jarred my memory even more was the memory of a very gentle, kind giant of a man who came into treatment hurting and longing for some way of stopping the pain. He took everything his counselors and the rest of the treatment team had to heart and ran with it. I look back and think that this was just 3 years into my career in Addiction Medicine and less than 5 years in my own journey in healing. If I had been my supervisor today, I probably would have told one of my peers after a supervision session that I still had not a clue what I was doing, I was just trying to stay between the guardrails! Anyway, once I acknowledged Matt on Facebook, he filled me in on the last 19.98 years. Yes, almost 20 years. He talked of how grateful he was and how much he appreciated the meetings he'd been directed to and the wisdom he'd been given and all that jazz. He mentioned the peace he'd found, many of the losses he had and how much he knew he still had to work on his Recovery every time he turned around. He mentioned the gifts of the Program and Dr. Bob and Bill W. and all those who had guided him along the way. He spoke with deep gratefulness of how supportive his family was and how, when all else failed, his Beagles listened and never thought about using, drinking or acting out in any way! He seemed to laugh at some of the irony of my "ranch" in Texas and how I had a herd of struggling addicts to move along, admonishing them to pay attention. Then, he did the most amazing thing. Without knowing it, he plastered a bumper sticker right there on the page:

PS -- There is no Gravity -- Life Just Sucks! (and it's all Good!)

Acutally, here's his quote (with some confidentiality modifications!): "Oh, and a post script: [My medicall illness] has attacked ...and moved me up to a Stage 6. I'm on the Transplant list @ ... Low platelet count prevents me from [the next level of medical treatment], but other things are coming along. Can't dwell on it, life goes on. Besides, I got a bonus of 20 years that I would have had (let alone, remember)! It's all good." My only thought was, "Holy Crap! He just gave me all this wonderful stuff and put the 'reality' in the PS!"

As I reflected, I've seen this before. In particular, I think of a man I'll call Buck. He wrote from a county prison where he was being warehoused. He told me of how he was taking advantage of the time to read, write, take long walks around a gym track, listen to music on his CD player, and visit the library in the County Jail. He spoke of how reading the "Classics" had helped him with his loneliness and how sharing the Big Book of AA with others had helped keep him grounded in staying sober in spirit. He included articles about the brain he'd copied from Time Magazine. He went on for 3 pages before he wrote something like this: "Oh, yeah, they've had to increase the Vitamin C to 10,ooo mg a day to counter the chemotherapy. My colon cancer was Stage IV, but they think they were able to get it all. I have to wait another two weeks before they can start the radiation treatment. Once that is done, I can go back to the Prison." He went back to some more statements of gratitude and encouragement for those of us who were still working with those who were "in denial."

These kind of things remind me that peace comes from deep within. Both of these men reminded me that they had something I forget to seek many days. They did not look for what was painful, lacking or in short supply in their lives. Heaven knows they had enough to worry, complain, or fret about. However, something in their spiritual anchor allowed them to move that to the Post Script and to be clear that they were focused on what was true about themselves, about life and about Recovery. If you read the body of their letters, you heard about a life that was full, content and wonderful. In both cases (as with other times I've been given this kind of gift), I smiled as I was moved to tears of gratitude. In both cases, no, in all cases, I am stunned when the reality of their lives hits me, taking my breath away. I am left in awe, not particularly because they deal with life threatening illnesses, but because they face life threatening illnesses in the post-script!

That is the harsh reality - Life sucks. I can't minimize that. One of the lessons they did NOT teach me in medical school was that every single one of my patients will eventually die. With any luck, very few will be on my watch! With really good luck, most will outlive me, since I treat a population that is, by and large, much younger than I am! Regardless, every single human being will expire, transition, or go kaput! Every single day, each and every one of us will face some sort of disappointment! With luck, it will be that Starbucks is out of Carmel Cinnamon Dulce Fat-free Sugar-Free Peroxide-Free Three Squirt for our Venti Triple Soy Extra Hot Latte!!! On most days, it will be far more than that. On some days, the disappointment will feel too much to bear and the next day will be worse. THAT SUCKS! I can't change that. If I'm really, really lucky, though, I can be in a serene enough place to surrender to the trust that this Universe is loving, creating and generous enough to guide me through it to the other side. I can hold on to the notion that it is the fact of the frost that MAKES the peaches make fruit, but only if there are at least 29 days of frost every winter. I don't have to try to feel peachy warm when I'm at risk of frostbite. I just have to stay warm, get out of the cold when I can and remember that Spring will come, if I don't march northward!

Woody Allen said some variation of this: "Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon." I think there's some wisdom here. It's just the truth. Life has all those things. We can choose to focus on them, or we can see the sunrise, hear the laughter, find the joy and notice that some sucky force keeps our feet on the ground and allows us not to float aimlessly into the ethers!


PS -- There is no Gravity -- Life Just Sucks! (and it's all Good!)

The Universe Thanks You

(With apologies for the hiatus!)

I was sitting with Jared today, out on the deck, as we talked about how difficulty times have been recently. Like just about everyone in America and, possibly, The World, life has been very uncertain, finances even less predictable and the future a foggy horizon. As Jared got stuck in the middle of the litany of all the things that were going awry in his life, most of which were, for certain, the direct result of his being in residential treatment for addiction.....again. His wife was unhappy, his daughter doing poorly in school, his sister, who was also his business partner, was terrified to run the business alone, a major business deal had fallen through just that morning and the quarter would not be a "winner," and so forth. The list went on and on. About the time all the misery had been enumerated, he launched into all the things he had to worry about: the stock market, the future of his childrens' education fun, his own recovery, whether his marriage would survive, if the pipes would freeze, etc., etc., etc.
About the time I was really needing something wise to say to redirect the conversation, a hand full of Canadian Geese flew gracefully, but noisily overhead and a wonderfully colored sweet gum leaf blew onto the table. My sardonic little smirk arose, as I asked, "Did you notice all the little 'Thank You' Notes?"
His puzzled look let me know he had not gotten my point. I explained, "Don't you see all the little 'Thank you' Notes? The geese, the leaves, the beautiful sunset, the swirling pattern in the clouds? They're all little thank you notes from your Higher Power, thanking you for worrying about how to make the universe work!"
Slowly, a smile came to his face.
The Universe Thanks You!

So many times in our hectic work days, we get so lost in the "things" we "must" do and get done. We worry about what will happen and how we will finish this and that, and so many things that will end up how ever they will end up regardless of what we do. I like the definition of worry as "ingratitude in advance." Like so many of us, when Jared was wrapped up in his worry, he was losing sleep, eating erratically, acting grumpy, and missing out on so much around him.
In my mind, somewhere the Creative Force that keeps this universe in such perfect balance (remember, a matter of one digit of degrees off its axis and the earth would both fry and freeze) is both chuckling and shaking its metaphorical head. I also imagine that, in an effort to get simple-minded folks like me to see how fruitless worry is, this same Force (God, Higher Power, Spirit, whatever) sends an amazing array of "Thank You's." They are everywhere -- the swirling clouds, the magical colors in the fall leaves or the spring flowers, a butterfly, the migrating ducks and geese, the sunrise or sunset, or a rainbow. All are little "thank you's" from the universe around us and reminders that worry is you and me trying to do things that humans can't do. Things like trying to change the future or change a mind or change the past. Things like staying awake to feel more rested or not eating to feel less hungry. Things like feeling unending shame about mistakes we cannot undo so we can feel better about ourselves. Things like leaving fourteen messages with someone who told us to leave them alone so they will call us back.
We cannot make flowers out of soil and water. We cannot (yet) calculate all the parts or any theories of relativity or quantum theory or whatever theory we will come up with next to explain things we can't yet explain. That is not our talent, nor is it our job. However, when we worry and do all these things, we live in a gracious universe. We live in a universe that uses frost to make peaches and tulips. We live in a universe that uses lightning to start forest fires so that forests can change and grow stronger.
Grace is mysterious. Likewise, mystery is all around us. Check it out next time you find yourself wrapped in worry -- look for the little "Thank You's." They will be there. Trust me. They will be all around.
The Universe Thanks You!