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Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

~from the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

I’ve been told by some well meaning and some not so well meaning people over the years that my atheism is a distraction to other group members who are serious about their recovery, the implication being that because I am a non-believer in deity that I am not serious.  Some have even gone to lengths to suggest that I not participate in Al-Anon or AA as I am harming others, which I always take to mean I struck a nerve with them. They appeared to be distracted by me. All I could do was extend an apology. It was hurtful, but at least I understood that the issue was them and their belief not my non-belief. It was for them to resolve not mine to acquiesce to.

First of all, I respect everyone’s beliefs including the god of their understanding. Al-Anon is not a place for idle theological or metaphysical speculation.  I never attempt to violate the sanctity of the meeting or principals by doing so. I don’t cross talk, I don’t question and I never give advice. In fact, I extend these principals to my life outside the group.  Giving advice to someone is like saving their life. Once you do it you become responsible for the advice you give. No thank you. That has blown up in my face once too often.  

Secondly, I am simply responding according to my personal experience, which is just as valid as any theist’s experience. Thirdly, if you don’t want to deal with the non-belief of other group members then don’t open it up for discussion.  Several years ago I contemplated quitting Al-Anon because the flack I would get after the meeting each time a god related step was being discussed was becoming annoying to the point of my own distraction. Instead I just kept my mouth shut and chose to not weigh in while others discussed the god of their understanding. Sadly, I was becoming jaded and quite cynical.

Then something wonderful happened. I learned that I was not the only non-believer in Al-Anon. In fact, in some cities non-believers have gathered into their own regular weekly meetings. Once again the program taught me that I was not terminally unique. There were others, just like me, who had similar thoughts and experiences.  And despite non-belief they too found that the program worked for them and that the insights it provided were healing and helpful.

 I started testing the waters again when the subject of god or a higher power came up. Fortunately, non-believers have been coming out of the atheist closet in recent years. Atheism and skepticism are starting to come back into fashion despite that we are still a statistical minority in this country. These days when I choose to share it is not uncommon for someone to come up to me after a meeting and thank me, whereas in the past I might be criticized or even challenged.

Frankly, god or no god, the efficacy of the Al-Anon program remains the same. Otherwise I would have left it. The program and the fellowship it offers has helped to restore me to a place of sanity and serenity.  I have shared my thoughts previously about the “god of my understanding” and the oxymoronic subjectivity of that statement. I won’t address it further at this point.

The critics in the past actually violated at least two of the Twelve Traditions. The first is the 5^th tradition which states that Al-Anon exists to provide help and comfort to family members (and individuals) and to provide support in dealing with Alcoholism. In no way were my early critics helpful or comforting. They were lucky they didn’t get punched in the face considering my poor anger management skills in those days.  

I would also make an argument that the tenth tradition was violated as well. Their criticism – at least from those who were not well intentioned – could have engaged us in a controversy had I been a little more contentious.  At that point in my life I had been broken down and brought low that I was not interested in a fight. All I wanted was a place where others might listen as I attempted to work things out for me.

What is it about human discourse that seems to bespeak a need to persuade others to our particular point of view? Why must we seek validation through the belief of others versus being content to allow others beliefs to unfold through their own experience?

I used to believe that eating disorders was a female psychological problem. But, that is incorrect. Men can have them too and I most certainly do. My attitude toward my body and my relationship with food has put me up and down the scale. Just over a year ago I tipped the scales at 265 pounds. This morning I weigh 190. Just over a week ago I was 184 pounds. This morning I am in a panic over what appears to be weight gain.

Logically, I am aware that my weight can fluctuate from 3-5 pounds daily for a variety of reasons – water weight and bowel regularity are two such reasons. Nonetheless I find myself anxious that I might become that fat guy I used to be just over a year ago. I exercise, I don’t eat refined sugars and I have completely eliminated starchy “pre-digested” foods such as rice, potatoes, breads and pastas from my diet in favor of the complex carbohydrates found in nuts and vegetables.  The only grains I eat – All Bran and Oat Bran – I do so sparingly and only in the meted portions.

My energy, blood pressure and cholesterol are great according to my doctor. Yet, the panic is driving me crazy. It’s weird being a male with a distorted view of my body in a culture that pretty much sees this as a female issue. Some of the cause can be seen in my upbringing. I was raised by a mother who is anorexic and had serious health issues over the years during my childhood. She was less than 100 pounds several times and does not have the frame or body type for which that would be healthy, although she is still a petite woman when she is.

I am a comfort eater. Rather than deal with my emotions I stuff my face. When I am angry I eat. When I am depressed I eat. When I am sad I eat. When I am anxious I eat and when I am happy I eat. And as you probably have no trouble imagining I eat like crap. Salty, fatty and sugary foods where my fare for most of my adult life, habits I developed after moving out of my parent’s house. A lot of things can be said about my mother, but she served a healthy low fat, low calorie diet heavily loaded with raw vegetables.

The poverty of young adulthood and the disinclination to cook in my high metabolism youth caused me to disregard my health. I was skinny as a rail. I was a beanpole with my ribs showing from about 15 to 25, when I got married and started drinking heavily. By the time I was divorcing my wife at 31 I was pushing dangerously close to 300 pounds. Fortunately, the poverty of divorce proceedings from made drinking and eating unaffordable. I often went a day or two without eating and as a result dropped down to 200 pounds in a very short time.

But, even before then I had traveled up and down the scale. As a young child I had a stocky build and would often gain weight during the wet, cold winter months, but would slim down during the spring and summer. As an asthmatic child sports and physical activity where not fun things for me. As I got older my doctors advised that I had what is commonly referred to as “athletic asthma” meaning that exertion caused the onset of my symptoms (as well as the flu, chest colds and cat dander).

It wasn’t until I was 17 that I was prescribed an inhaler for sudden symptoms and that only finally after a weeklong stint in the hospital after suffering a weekend long asthma attack that was near fatal. By then I had grown to dislike sports and physical activity that didn’t involve walking or riding my bike.  

It wasn’t until my early to mid-twenties that I started to overcome this attitude. Thankfully, the community college I attended had a physical education requirement in the earning of my associates. The class was pass or fail, but you could earn an A if you lost some body fat (you were measured at the beginning of the quarter and at the end). I wanted a four point that term and changed my habits and started taking fitness seriously. I ran 3 miles a day and took an aerobics class (mostly because the instructor was a comely and busty fellow student whom I wanted to date) three times a week.

Running became a habit for several years and I continued to do so until I blew my knees out just a few years ago, although during my married years (25-30) I was on a fitness hiatus.

To be continued…

This is fitness week. I have become concerned over my relationship with eating, food and health. This will be deeply personal at times as I use myself as the subject for these explorations. Let’s see if we can find a better way to live.

The real challenge in respect to technology is that its advancement often outpaces our ability to ethically cope with it. It only betters or worsens things in the world to the extent that we struggle with the ethical questions that it presents us. Technology can save lives, but we can often use that technology to kill or destroy lives too.  Electricity can light a home or power a car, but we can also use to execute someone. The technology developed to use electricity is impersonal, but our employment is not.

Divorce was good for me. Through the frustrating and emasculating process of separating from my wife of five years I discovered who I wasn’t. During the summer of 1999 while our lawyers were divvying up the artifacts of our life together, my wife getting what little we had of value and me getting the bulk of our accumulated debt and staggering back taxes, my business failed and I found myself a homeless vagabond. I threw a few tattered clothes, toiletries and some favorite dog-eared books, including A Course in Miracles and The Places that Scare You into a backpack and hit the road.

Scrapping what little cash I had remaining I purchased a summer pass on Greyhound and headed for Chicago.  I did this because I could no longer afford my rent and found living in my parent’s basement humiliating and intolerable. I was 33 and friends and family seemed to be in no short supply of analysis regarding where I had gone wrong in my life. None of it was helpful in anyway.

 By mid July my depression had started to simmer into rage and suicide was beginning to seem like a viable solution. It was out of a sense of self-preservation rather than a spirit of adventure that I chose the less crazy of the two options. I didn’t tell anyone what I was planning. One day my family woke up I and was gone.  I left no note behind to explain where I was going or why. I just took to the road screaming silently to myself as I ran.

 I had always wanted to visit Middle America and Chicago seemed a glamorous place to start a new life. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest I could never imagine myself living anywhere else in the world. Intoxicated since birth by the beauty (or was it the mold spores I had been inhaling) I had developed a large amount of geocentric hubris. It amuses me to hear people talk about Seattle as if it were the fabled Shambala. Back in 1999 I was one of them.  But, on a cool August morning I shook the dust from my feet and walked away from my homeland.

Many try to deny the darkness within their hearts. They squelch every dark fantasy, every perverted image that flows forth from the river of their unconscious mind. But, this denial only leads to an eventual dam breaking suppression.  It should be no surprise to us when some of the most tightly wound and self-righteous people find their darkness spilling into the light to their own horror and the horror of those who thought they knew them. It is harmful to deny who you are…even the parts you feel are sinful or evil.

When the vehemently anti-gay politician gets caught in the men’s room seeking sexual favors or the ultra conservative mega church pastor gets outed surfing the web for male companionship ( I don’t believe that being gay is wrong – just so we’re clear) I don’t feel contempt, rather I experience a profound sense of empathy. These people were overcome by their own darkness. 

When I was a young man I used to hold a grudge against every seeming breech of character from such men as these. Now I no longer hold their hypocrisy against them. How often have I nearly suffered a breech in my own dam? What would those who love me say if they knew the contents of my mind?

The problem with those who would suppress their demons is that they will never truly exorcise them because they will never truly understand themselves. Our darkness is just another aspect of who we are and it must be brought into the light if it is to ever be understood. We cannot exorcise our demons because they are, in fact, us. We must integrate them along with our angels.  This is how we make ourselves into whole people.

Don’t make the mistake that suppressing your darkness prevents more darkness from entering the world. It does not. Suppression, denial, ensures that your darkness will eventually enter the world and not under your control. It already has. By willfully exploring it, by bringing it into the light you will learn to understand it. And being in the light the fear and the revulsion will transform into compassion for yourself and others. By degrees the darkness becomes the light and you become an illumined being no longer under the mastership of your passions. You are the master.

I am think I am slowly dying of boredom.

The hours drag into days,

And days drag into weeks

And the weeks stretch and wind down the long corridors of the years.

Today I learned that my job description can be summed in this way:

Their job is to wear you down. My job is to have the stamina to last long enough to

Wear them down instead. The last person to throw his hands up in resignation and sit down wins.

How much of my anxiety and depression is bio-chemical and how much of it is related to my present job – every job – that I have ever had? In my twenties I used sex and alcohol to deal with my boredom.  I am an alcoholic so drinking is no longer an option. I must admit that I feel much better now that I no longer drink.  Sadly, at 45 I am not as attractive to members of the opposite sex as I once was.  I am shallow enough that this revelation doesn’t feel so good. It’s not that I want to have sex with every bright eyed beauty that catches my eye, but it would be nice to see a little desire in theirs when they look at me.

Just a little desire…

Now and again…

Of course, that might indicate daddy issues and I really don’t want to deal with some young woman’s Elektra complex no matter how taut and supple of body she is. Besides, I was always a serial monogamist. If I slept with a woman I usually ended up in a relationship until we could no longer stand each other and the hatred was mutual.

I used to laugh at the older men in my life who seemingly succumbed so easily to the midlife crisis. Now I understand and I wish that in my foolish youth I had mustered up more empathy.

45 is midlife

That is if I am lucky enough to live to 90.

Fortunately, I still have dreams…

Not necessarily the energy.

I have planted the seeds; so to speak, I just don’t have the energy to tend the garden with love and tenderness.

I eat healthy

I do yoga

I walk everywhere and opt for public transportation

But, energy eludes me

Or is the enthusiasm that eludes me?

Does enthusiasm = energy?

This midlife melancholy shouldn’t be seen as complete dissatisfaction about life. I have some good times and, even more important, some deeply meaningful moments. I am just struggling with the realities that my reluctant maturity requires I accept.

Happiness…

The subject of so much speculation,

The subject of so much angst,

The subject of so much confusion,

No two people that I talk to seem to have a remotely similar understanding of what happiness is. Some don’t even seem to want to be happy. They seem content to disregard it as not being a useful state of mind. Ironically, some of these people cling to something they call contentment as a virtue, which could be called a form of happiness.  A state of contentment seems to make them happy or at least the thought of it, the possibility of contentment does. I always ask if not happiness then what? It is interesting to note that the ancient Greek’s considered contentment to be a state near death.

Our Declaration of Independence states that the pursuit of happiness is a natural human right bestowed upon us by our creator. This mindset would suggest that happiness is a human drive. Happiness is something that we rightfully and naturally seek.  

The consumer climate of our country and Japan, whose conspicuous consumption rivals the United States and sometimes surpasses it, has happiness tied in with materialism. Naturally, the more spiritually and religious minded recoil in horror at such notions of happiness, but except for either the most cynical or ascetic of these folks, they still capitulate to the consumerism of modern day life to some degree regardless. It almost can’t be helped unless you are totally conscious of the contents of your mind and the actions that result from it. And then you still need to eat, sleep and shit so some material needs are necessary

I am neither cynic (I do have moments of despair which breeds cynicism at times)

Nor am I an ascetic

But, I am not totally materialistic either. I have lost my possessions. In fact, when I failed both as a husband and an entrepreneur I lost everything. I even ended up homeless and had to start over again. I didn’t mind that. It is nice, even quite enjoyable, to lose the weight of material objects to live unencumbered for awhile.  I wouldn’t have thought that at the time.

I also enjoy some creature comforts as well. I see nothing ethically wrong about wanting to own stuff. As long as I don’t harm anyone in the process of accumulating and that I use some of my resources to help others as I can. Stuff, as one blogger suggests, is the artifacts of our life.  Having been someone who has “lost it all” I understand the value of things differently than those who have been comfortable for the most part. My opinions were arrived at from experience and not just sitting back in my recliner with a cup of coffee.

I draw a lot of criticism from the cynic and the spiritual,

I used to get irked whenever someone criticized me about my pursuit of happiness, which they always tied to materialism. The funny thing is that I have never thought my happiness contingent upon what I owned or where I lived. I just don’t always have a clear understanding of what I mean by being happy. This is what fueled my irritation.

I’d go into a defensive posture.

I buy my furniture from places such as Goodwill,

I shop locally,

I support local small businesses first,

I recycle,

Before I bring new stuff into my house I donate or give away to others what I no longer want or have need of.  My protests would continue in the same vein. I recoiled at being thought shallow or materialistic by another. Always tying it to the material as my detractors did.

Now I don’t care. I don’t even listen to those voices, at least in regards to this.

I think spiritual people have it wrong.

We are not necessarily spiritual beings having a physical or material experience. Rather, we are physical beings who occupy time-space and occasionally we have moments of transcendence – peak experiences -that give us a glimpse of what might be a thimble full of a much larger universal experience.

But, I would add, perhaps, because I can’t say for certain whether or not this is true.

Time is an illusion my critics have said

I reply, “Perhaps, time is not so much an illusion as our perception of it is. Because of the way our minds work our experience of it is limited to experiencing it in a linear progression.”

That seems true to me. I am aware that my body ages, it deteriorates and eventually give out on me. It doesn’t matter how well I take care of myself. Eventually “time runs out” on our physical bodies. If I get hit by a bus crossing the street I will become injured and maybe even crippled. I might even die.

 This seems to negate the whole body is an illusion argument to me.

The pain or death I experience is real.

The body is not an illusion,

It is just a form of existence, which may or may not have boundaries beyond the physical.

So if the body is real in its own way, so is this physical realm we inhabit.

The Buddha cautioned his followers from engaging in what he saw as idle metaphysical speculation. Metaphysics – the highly subjective sub discipline of philosophy which purports to lift the veil of reality to study what is, in fact, the “really” real – actually impedes our understanding and experience of reality.

Go figure.

This is the single biggest problem of pursuing transcendence as the “thing itself.” The experiences are erratic and too subjective. It is difficult to know for certain whether we are experiencing a greater truth or our fantasy of truth…even worse we might be delusional. Someone truly versed in classic metaphysics understands the epistemological constraints to human understanding.

I prefer to enjoy my life as it shows up.  I let the moments of transcendence occur when and as they will. Peak experiences are delicious. They often occur; it seems, to remind me that there is more to my life than meets the eye. They keep me open to the possibility that there is a larger life that I can tap into even though I don’t believe necessarily in a creator god or a divine plan.

My life doesn’t have any inherent meaning.

I am the product of an orgasm

One of my father’s sperm merging with the egg of my mother,

I am a happy accident.

There is no predestination as to which sperm and which egg meet up.

That is random

I am one individual result of natural selection and thousands and thousands of years of human evolution. I am product of my parent’s amorous copulation.

But, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a higher experience or even a transcendence of consciousness.

I just think that my life has no inherent meaning except that which I give it.

So I choose to be happy.

Even as I don’t know exactly what I mean by that,

Even as I look forward to the experience of happiness I understand that my experience of it is limited as well.

New Thought gurus like to opine that we are always at choice.

But, they fail to see that choice is not always 100% in our control,

We only have an approximation of free will.  Genetics plays a role in our lives too.

As a life long struggle with clinical depression and anxiety has proven to me, I cannot always choose to not be depressed. My state of mind has a lot to do with what I choose to dwell on, but what I choose to dwell on is often influenced by my neurology, by my bio-chemistry.

  It’s vicious cycle of the chicken and egg variety,

 This cycle, however, I have begun to exert some direct influence over with the aid of therapy and pharmaceuticals and medical treatment.  A change to a drier, sunnier climate has helped immensely as well.

Big Pharma may need to be reformed, but their products – wisely selected and used as prescribed – have helped me get my mind back.

I still don’t know exactly what happiness is. But, I do know that I am happier today than I was ten years ago. I am enjoying my life a little more fully than before.  My happiness may not look anything like what you think happiness should be. So what? My happiness isn’t contingent upon what you think it should be or that you should choose to pursue it at all.

I don’t care

I can’t make you happy.

I can’t choose happiness for you anymore than I can choose to keep you from being an alcoholic or a junkie.

You can have whatever state of mind or being that you desire.

As for me,

if not happiness then what?

My brain has locked

Frozen

Eternal twirling hourglass

A blue screen of death

I think to myself, this is not how my life was supposed to turn out.

I am bogged down by the minutia of data that has become post modern adult life

PINs

Passwords

Usernames

Bank balances

Retirement accounts

Bills to be paid

IRS

Taxes

And now this…

This…job….

These strings and strings of data needing to be analyzed...

Minutia is a great word to describe this.

My boss won’t think it a trifling matter, it is money after all.

But, as I sit staring at this spreadsheet, pulled from our SQL database, barely containing the scream that is, “What the fuck am I looking at anyway,” I can’t help but believe that minutia should be a word that means bullshit…piles and piles of knee deep bullshit.

Honestly, that is what I thought it meant until a friend suggest I look it up on dictinonary.com.

My latest bit of functional illiteracy doesn’t surprise me. Until recently I had been misusing the word “penultimate,” as it turns out.

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Dictionary.com:

So using it appropriately in a sentence, Yale Street is the penultimate stop before the F Line terminates at Southmoor Station.  Contrast that with how I had previously used the word.  I took penultimate to mean the “wowie zowieness of ultimate awesomeness” or such.  Again I submit to you that I am a functional illiterate.

Sometimes I am amazed that I graduated high school let alone earned a college degree. I am a sterling endorsement of the American public school system. The fact that I graduated is truly no child left behind.

So if not these strings of data would then what I be doing?

Would you like fries with that?

I was supposed to be the American Jacques Cousteau.

At the very least I wanted to be an astronaut or a cowboy.

Or  a post modern Socrates – an irascible yet affable gadfly saving society from itself.

I have forced myself to conform to the corporate workaday world to meet my needs…just barely.

There’s not a lot of paycheck between me and giving $10.00 hand jobs in the parking lot to make rent each month.

My biggest problem is maturity. At 45 I still have way more of the dreamer in me than I do the pragmatist. I dream big. But, work in a cubicle. What would happen if razed these pre-formed cubicle walls to the ground? What would happen if I yelled, “No more fucking Jell-o for me mom,” at the top of my lungs and disregarded the bemused and cynical stares of my coworkers?

Would I be happier then?

Would I be able to look my fear in the eye?

I killed Russell Shaw.

I shot him dead. It was a reflexive action. Moments after bursting into my home and tearing through my personal library of banned books there was a dime sized hole in the center of his forehead. Blood was oozing out of it. The fury in his hazel eyes gone replaced with a glassy, empty stare.

I was shaking with adrenaline and, I dare admit, the thrill of taking another man’s life. Then I barely made it to the toilet where I violently threw up my dinner –chipped beef and gravy over toast. Sweat slid down my forehead in rivulets the salt stinging my eyes. I could scarcely believe that Shaw was dead and it was me who had ended his life. Just last night we had coffee at the corner café offering each other opinion on Hobbes.

Where did the gun come from? It was mine.  I knew that. I had bought for just this purpose – protecting my home and possessions. I remember the day I purchased it from a bearded and light skinned man who sold weapons off the back of a stolen truck in a dark alley. I just don’t remember getting it from my night stand table…when did I run up the stairs and then back down to the library? Come to think of it how did Russell Shaw know about my library?

My stomach convulsed again and I heaved myself inside out into the porcelain bowel.

I never figured my neighbor for a somnambulant, cheerfully walking through his day to day until the agency stimulated the neurochip inside his skull. He didn’t seem the type to allow himself to be implanted. How did it come to pass that a member of the Freethinker’s Union…

I looked up from hugging the toilet to see a large man in a ski mask point a taser at me and fire. Tendrils of electric fire ripped through my body and a wetness expanded near my groin as I slipped abruptly into darkness.