Running Yellow Lights

Last week I heard this great line: “Running yellow lights is not accepting life on life’s terms.” It’s so perfectly true—and it’s funny.

It got me thinking about all the ways that 12-step recovery is trying, trying, trying to teach us how to live life as it is—and on its terms --to limit our own pain—and the pain that we inflict on others.

Think about our sayings and slogans: One Day at a Time, Be Here Now and

“Look down at your feet and stay where they are”.

I think about all the discomfort that I struggle with, and how much it’s because I want to be somewhere other than here so often. Yesterday I had to walk several blocks from my office to another business and I realized that the whole time I was walking that I wanted to be a block ahead of where I was. Even though it was a beautiful day I wanted to be there rather than here. And, of course as soon as I got there, I wanted the next there not the here. It got my attention and I realized it’s a constant state of mind.

But it’s not just when I am walking. When I stop at an intersection I want to be on the other side of it, not on this side. When I read a book I want to know what happens instead of enjoying how the writer is leading me now. When I am listening to a CD I want to be on the next track or the next disc—not this one. No matter the form or place or idea, I want to be there. But when I get there I’m not really there at all; I’m still longing for the next there.

I do this with things too. I can long for a pair of new boots or handbag or coat, but shockingly soon after I get it, I’m thinking about some other thing that I imagine I’ll like. That thing will be the next right thing. I think it’s just another way of trying to get there instead of fully experiencing and being here.

As active addicts we saw all of our grasping and craving and clinging, and now in recovery we have softened our behavior and changed our medium. But still. When I drive through an intersection and think, “Here I go”, or when I want to be over there and not here, or when I want another bag, or coat or shoes I’m not living life on life’s terms. Maybe, just maybe, I could let that next yellow light be my clear signal.

Restless

In the Big Book we read that alcoholics are “restless, irritable and discontent”. We use that phrase back at ourselves sometimes in a bashing way—as if it is something we have to get over or fix.

I know that we, as drinkers and recovering drinkers, have done a bit of damage to others and to ourselves thrashing about in our restlessness, fussing in our irritability and with a glass-half-empty discontentedness. But I’m thinking that there is another way to look at this.

What if being restless is part of being human? You know that saying, “We are not human beings living a spiritual life but spiritual beings trying to live a human life.” There is something to that.

Saint Augustine wrote, “You made us for yourself Oh Lord, and we are restless until we rest in you.” The antidote to our restless discontent is not therapy or grim self-discipline it is God. That is what our 12 steps are for—not to cure drinking but to bring us to a spiritual awakening—to help us find a God or Higher Power or an energy bigger than us so that we can, in fact, rest.