MycoolFitz

Intriguing that you would mention this, very insightful. It brings to my mind a famous saying of Achaan Cha, the great Thai monk. He would hold up a tea cup and say, "To me this cup is already broken." Everything is like this, already broken. Why does this upset us? When we think something is not broken, we think it is intact, that it is ours, so we have to protect it. And then when it turns out we cannot protect it, that we lose it, that it breaks, that it is taken from us — as everything always is — we go to pieces. We feel as if the world is not a safe place. We become paranoid and stressed out. But if we knew, with Achaan Cha, that things were already broken, that the nature of things — and of ourselves, especially and most importantly ourselves — is brokenness, and we could learn how to embrace and accept that, then I think we can live a happy life, appreciating the preciousness of what comes to us and goes from us. We'd know that whatever comes to us is always a precious and temporary gift. And whatever goes is peaceful in its going. Everything we lose makes way for something else. Every loss is an opening. Even death is an opening. So even though we might grieve, we are not surprised or shocked. We knew the cup was broken to begin with. It was always broken. It could not have existed at all had it not been broken from the start.

On another level I came to realize that the way I had stacked my books next to my plant holder was a precurser to an accident that was, as a result, inevitably going to happen in time. I rearranged my books and plant and then did a quick risk assessment of my apartment and made a few other preventative adjustments. One does not cling to the idea of perminance but neither does one need to precipitate endings through thoughtlessness.

This is a convoluted path to the story of my relapse a few years ago. After almost a year of sobriety, one evening I "just" picked up. My shocked, confused, angry, sad, disillusioned wife (now ex) asked me "what the hell was I thinking? Why did I choice to drink after all this time?" I replied "I don't know what I was thinking or why I did it, I just did." I realize now that I spent that year both not drinking and establishing precursers to what was going to follow by thinking that the behavior of not drinking was enough while I ignored all my other behaviors and thoughts that I was stacking like books against my stand of sobriety. Today I see that my recovery is a package deal that encapsulates the totality of what I think, how I act and who I am. While my end is inevitable I can be the person I want to exit as. My dad, after almost 60 years of alcoholic drinking, sobered at the age of 75 and died 10 years later a sober man. I can be that.

musicman66

Well said Fitz....I have come to enjoy reading your comments on the board....this one I read a few times, and is quite relevant to me nine months into being sober....I am thinking a lot these days about the "broken" nature of things - the essential pain of everyday life...We have to come to terms with that in our own way to move on...I have spent too long denying any feelings that involve that pain, that broken nature of things, that really involve any feelings at all - good or bad....just kept drinking and drinking......

"that things were already broken, that the nature of things — and of ourselves, especially and most importantly ourselves — is brokenness, and we could learn how to embrace and accept that, then I think we can live a happy life, appreciating the preciousness of what comes to us and goes from us"

I like that - if only I could have realized it much earlier.....Thanks for posting....

MycoolFitz

Oops, typo. Should have been a quote mark (") at the end of the first paragraph (...from the start.") from Zoketsu Norman Fischer--sorry, it didn't copy with the rest. I'm not that smart.

soberlicious

aaaaahmazing...beautiful post thank you

saphira

I look forward to your posts!! You even got me to buy the book that I am now reading and it's amazing! I actually just read something about the whole "letting go" thing. I admit, I struggle with this since I'm one of those people who clings to a lot of things. Something to work on!

raindancer11

Nice post, Fitz! I especially needed to read this:

instant

Well........... did you thank the pot or not? (rule 62)

Having read your post it occurred to me that the pot might actually have finally fulfilled it's true purpose