It is cold and dark this morning. I have been running a mental list of things to do through my head while restless in bed for over an hour in the half-wake of early morning. Enough. Today I will do what I can and then I will stop to rest. I no longer want to live my life like an endless marathon where there is always one more thing to do that is taxing, tiring, and unpleasant. The runners' high almost never (never?) finds me so I am putting my baton down. No more beating myself up to achieve the impossible.
The temptation is to promise myself to do all these undone things before the year ends. Some are old ways to court good luck. My grandmother taught my mother who taught me that you have all the laundry done before New Year. That's do-able but I don't know that it brings the promise of good luck. There is something about endings and beginnings that bring out the hope of a different, brighter path. But that path is not luck, it is paved in action, with work.
The OA program teaches "just for today" -- not "as a New Year's Resolution" or "starting on Monday" I'll do xyz. There is no need to wait for a magic start day. That magic start is now. Even part way through a day.
Today's reading talks about just having the desire to change. That's enough. I don't need to make elaborate promises, public or private, to lose weight, to eat right, to clean my house, to practice my creativity... see there, I've started making a list of potential resolutions automatically!
The contemplative point for action in For Today is "I will allow no one, including myself, to pressure me into promising to lose weight." The Big Book chapter The Doctor's Opinion talks about those in addiction who are "over-remorseful and make many resolutions, but never a decision" [Big Book, p.xxx]. They will not recover so long as they are emotionally unstable. I am working on my recovery, my spirituality, and my emotional self.
In the chapter There is a Solution it reads:
So he returned to this doctor, whom he admired, and asked him point-blank why he could not recovery. He wished above all things to regain self-control. He seemed quite rational and well balanced with respect to other problems. Yet he had no control whatever over alcohol. Why was this?
...
The doctor said: "You have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I have never seen one single case recover, where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you." Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang.
He said to the doctor, "Is there no exception?"
"Yes," replied the doctor, "there is. Exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times. Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions and attitudes are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them." [Big Book, p.27]It's a process. I am working on my thinking, feeling my feelings, and holding myself as I would hold a child who struggles to learn.
Elsewhere in the Big Book, a woman writes of early recovery as a pink cloud (that was my 87 days of abstinence earlier this year when it seemed easy), followed by a year of crying, then a year of rage, followed by a new sense of emotional equilibrium [Big Book, p.346]. I seem to be in the year of crying just now. So I must be on my path for today.
For fun, I googled Mark Twain and promises after reviewing his quote that started this morning's pages. I found this as the top result:
I cannot promise you a life of sunshine;
I cannot promise you riches, wealth or gold;
I cannot promise you an easy pathway
That leads away from change or growing old.
But I can promise all my heart’s devotion;
A smile to chase away your tears of sorrow.
A love that’s true and ever growing;
A hand to hold in your’s through each tomorrow.Those are good promises.
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