Today's reading is about not living in the future -- which I cannot control -- but rather living in the present. It cautions against "some day" as in someday I will get a handle on my issues, someday I'll travel to Egypt, someday I'll learn to dance... It says "I have lived in the future for too long. My life is going on now, and there is only one way to live it: now." Yep.
The research suggests that depression is living in the past and anxiety is living in the future. The only way to find peace is to live now, in the present. When I'm binging, I am avoiding both my past and my future. I binge so I don't feel, so I'm not present.
Before OA, I would always emerge from a binge with some new formula to avoid future trouble with food. I failed over and over and over again. My way didn't work. I was still having thoughts of suicide. Elements of my past were so scary I could not even contemplate them without shutting down. If I'm honest, I was both anxious about the future and not concerned at the same time. I was not convinced I would live too long anyway. I was doing my best to fulfil that prophecy by eating myself to an early death.
As my recovery strengthens, I realize I cannot afford to live in the past or the future. The resentments, the anger, the shame, the worry make my present a living hell, don't change my past, and jeopardize my future. It physically hurts, it is mentally tortuous, and it is spiritually empty. And so I am learning to change my thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. That is:
We learn how to level out the emotional swings that got us into trouble both when we were up and when we were down.
We are taught to differentiate between our wants (which are never satisfied) and our needs (which are always provided for). We cast off the burdens of the past and the anxieties of the future, as we begin to live in the present, one day at a time. We are granted "the serenity to accept the things we cannot change" -- and thus lose our quickness to anger and our sensitivity to criticism.
Above all, we reject fantasizing and accept reality. [Big Book, p.559]The Promises talk about not regretting our past nor fearing our future. I like this statement in the Big Book:
That [recovered] life for me is live one day at a time, letting the problems of the future rest with the future. When the time comes to solve them, God will give me strength for that day. [Big Book, p.300]Living one day at a time, in the moment, is really the Serenity Prayer in long form, isn't it?
The inner research geek in me likes to look up the source of the For Today quotes. Pindar lived and wrote circa 518 - 438 BCE. He was a Greek poet and philosopher; his surviving work celebrates Olympic ideals and victors. In his Olympian Odes, he not only wrote "do not peer too far", today's quote, but also this:
I will not steep my speech in lies; the test of any man lies in action. [Olympian Odes, IV, l.27]True 2,500 years ago. True today. Amazing.
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