Kindness

Kindness cannot be shown enough or expressed enough. Kindness will change your day as well as those of the people you show it to. Moreover, kindness has a way of radiating out to those that witness kindness secondhand. Like a rock thrown into a pond, the ripples reach all the distant shores. Do not let acts of kindness be random. Instead let them be many and thrown around like they are in endless supply.

Vanity Writing

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live?" Henry David Thoreau.


For those of you that know me a little or a lot, you know that I do not watch more than a few hours of television a year. I believe that not having a television forces me to be out in the world living my life. I also believe that by not watching television--or reading the paper for that matter--I am allowed to look rationally at arguments and situations without the influence of rhetoric and bias from these mediums. I think and write about "stuff" based on what I see and hear that appears to need my attention, while pulling in factual information that allows me to clearly define my opinions. 


So I state to you, based in response to Thoreau's quote above; "I am living, therefore I must write." Furthermore, "I hope it is not in vain."  

Tiempo - Part of a thread of thought from Fearless

In the Shawshank Redemption, Steven King wrote an interesting line; “get busy living, or get busy dying.” King plagiarizes Bob Dylan perhaps, but either way, it is a quote worth thinking about while you stand in line waiting to check out at the local grocery store. How does time haunt or hunt all of us?

Back in 1986 I had a horrible nightmare. Mostly asleep in the predawn hours, blissfully listening to the waves of the early morning Pacific tide crash heavily into the shore along the coast of Puerto Vallarta, it grabbed me and pulled me in. Like most nightmares, it started as unthreatening and ridiculous in its inexplicable need to show me the mundane. In the dream, I see myself as I was right before I walked out the door for my vacation, setting my wristwatch on top of the chest-of-drawers in my bedroom, promising myself I would be back to retrieve it. In the dream, I tentatively release the watch to the walnut veneered surface and am violently sucked into the vortex that becomes nightmare. Suddenly watches and clocks, old, and new start swirling around me as they become the eyes of my persecutors. These demon judges churn around me and accuse me of wasting time and more importantly my life. 


Still further I am sucked down into the vortex. They come at me faster, hurtling further charges of slothfulness and uselessness of life and time. They issue a relentless death verdict for my waste of these two fleeting treasures. My judges detach their hands from their faces and hurl them at me like spears. No escape is coming, I know in my dream I am going to be killed by these monsters; I just have not experienced my last life-grasping breaths yet, but they are rapidly coming.

Tangled in a noose of blankets, I struggle to pull myself from the sheets and the bed that is trying to kill me as well. I rip the clock on the nightstand from the wall, toppling the lamp onto the bed, and ejecting the drawers to the floor. I feel vindicated by at least stopping one of the monsters from being able to get at me.

Moments later, reality takes hold; I am awake and have behaved like a lunatic. I scuttle to the patio, scrutinizing the shadows and look at the predawn light coming over the mountains shaking from the terror that still clings to my soul. I can still feel the vice-like grip of deaths hand on my heart, and realize I am blessed to be alive. I stand on the patio until the sun is fully on me, and I can hear the staff and other guests waking. Even then, just to be safe, I wait for the light to creep into the corners and vacate any time devices that may be hiding in wait to cast their hands of death at me.

As safety and sanity regain a foothold on my life, I walk out onto the beach, and breathe the warm, humid salt air. The waves smashing into the shore, and the sand between my toes all work to massage my spirit and help me relax and reconnect with reality. But it is reality that is still pulling at me. The reality that I knew an hour ago, I realize is no longer with me. Instead a new reality has replaced it. My new reality is that life is quite different. I am exhilarated by the time that is slipping away from me and what I will do with what is left of it.

My new clarity is that time does not exist and that only action is representative of life. The reason I do not like to sleep more than what is needed for good health, is that death gets a little taste of me every time I drift off and somewhere deep inside me I know I am being eaten alive as we sleep. The more we sleep the less we live. We are taught that sleep is good and it helps to extend life. This is false. Extending our lives is not the point; it is not the perception of length of life that has value, only that we live passionately why we are here. We must be voracious eaters of life for time to have no judgement of us. 

Papa

When I think back on my life, and I pull memories from individual days, all I remember is you. You are my hero, from my first memory; saving my ball that day, when I let it roll into the canal when I was not even two. I see you, standing there with the rake, pulling it out of the water, saving my favorite thing of the moment from floating away into eternity.

I do not see mom anymore accept as a ghost wandering through my dreams floating as warmth in my heart and head for brief moments. But I still see you. My hero. I hope that you will return one day to be that again. 

The 12 Step Joke

Over the last 25 years I have been in and watched others participate in 12 step programs as a viable way to solve issues surrounding addiction. Ultimately, I have seen the programs fail to address the core mental issues that caused all of us to run away from situations we were incapable of handling. Instead, I have seen the majority of people that have entered into 12 step programs become addicted to the program and use it as another mechanism to avoid responsibility to healthy, lifelong recovery from their mental maladies. This action stems from a belief that not doing the addiction action(s) is the answer to the problem; it is not.  Quitting the habit does little to build a basis for creating powerful coping mechanisms to adverse past, present, and potential future mental trauma and it is never the be all end all solution to a better life—which it is touted as. According to Rehab International’s website (2011) 12 step programs, while being available “worldwide” are highly ineffectual in the treatment of alcoholism or addiction of any kind.

Malibu Horizon, a proactive center for addiction recovery, emphasizes addressing the person and not the symptoms as a healthy path to a better life (Malibu Horizons, 2011). Though I did not attend their facility, they emphasize and practice the methods that helped me change my life. They are broken down into four simple steps which look like this:

1.      Be honest. This is the hardest part for anyone that uses addiction as a coping mechanism. The longer we are trying to cope and appear normal, the harder it is for us to be honest because every day we become better liars as we hide behind a façade of normalcy. Through honesty about what we cannot cope with, we are able to see that we can learn to deal with the issues that have plagued us.

2.      Truly want to be healthy. This is a hard step because it requires honest change in most major areas of our lives. Change is terrifying and it is what causes so many of us addicts to not complete recovery or to only accept the good parts of it, and shun the hard ones. Many addicts choose to stay sick because they know what to expect from their actions and those of the people around them if they stay sick. Being healthy means that for a while—possibly the rest of our lives—we will not know what to expect from life with any certainty. This is a great thing though, as that now life becomes a welcome challenge as opposed to an adversary that is holding us down.

3.      Future goals. There has to be a plan for what to do after we quit the addiction and realistic goals set for our future. This also encompasses the belief that we will be healthy and that there is a life that does not go in circles but instead runs in a linear fashion.

4.      Blend therapeutic modalities. Be in one-on-one counseling, add in small groups, participate in large groups, and finally find peer mentorship from someone that has truly practiced and lives a changed life. Together, these therapies, when blended assist in a healthy reintegration with life and people.

For me, and many others like me that I know, this is the path that makes sense as a road to recovery from our mental quandaries—though this is most likely not the only path. Going through this process is difficult but on the other side there is less fear and much more optimism to be had. Honesty, a desire to be healthy, setting realistic goals, and mixing therapy styles, has guided us to balance in our lives. This is something that not one person out of thousands I have known has been able to honestly say about a 12 step program or about their individual lives.

Sources

Malibu Horizon (2011). Non 12 step recovery rehab program. Retrieved March 20, 2011, from http://www.malibuhorizon.com/non-12-step-program.aspx

Rehab International (2011). Addiction, treatment, and alcoholism. Retrieved March 20, 2011, from http://rehab-international.org/alcoholism

Fear

Fear

It is morning again. I am happy to see the sun peeking through the curtains. Still, as in every day, I cannot get out of bed yet. I have to check off the things I am afraid of and add to my list a set of guidelines for how to deal with all of them, should even one of them pop up, which I am sure they will; every last one of them. They have been lurking behind benches, bushes, and office doors for years now, today for sure is going to be the day that they are going to jump out and gang rape my mind. 

Crazy

It has been a while since I spent any time here; thought I better pop in and share some thoughts and possibly questions. Tonight, I am curious about crazy.

Crazy, if applied correctly, allows us to be eccentric. Eccentric, so long as it does not hurt anyone is thought of as entertaining and sometimes cool. Rich uncle Leopold was eccentric, remember kids? He used to run around with a tuxedo and a spear gun looking for sea horses in the back yard...what a hoot he was. There ya go, eccentric.

Then there is the crazy that does not leave any of us with a chuckle in our throat. That is the crazy that we know lurks inside of us and comes out in irrational and unfunny ways that makes us sound and look bad. Often many of us see our own crazy and yet we do nothing to kill it. Instead we let it run rampant at times and wreak havoc on those around us; often times even on ourselves.

Where does crazy come from and how to we purge it from our lives? I ask, because it is a waste of time dealing with bad crazy.You would think that people would want more peace and contentment in their lives and let crazy go. Why hold onto it when it does not take you anywhere good? Or does it?