Restless and Fired into Madness

 “We are fired into life with a madness that comes from the gods and which would have us believe that we can have a great love, perpetuate our own seed, and contemplate the divine.”

This is Plato describing the human condition. His description turns on “Which would have us believe…” There is nothing new under the sun, and it’s not likely that addicts are specially gifted but just maybe extra sensitive to that inherent madness which is born in us (fired into life) or maybe we hold on longer than the average bear to believing that we deserve and can have all of it: great love and the divine.

I think, though that we can. Not by using our special medicines (alcohol, pills, food, sex, work or loving too much), and not by holding ourselves up as special or different than other humans but by and through surrender.

I’m contemplating this right now as I read the wonderful book, “The Holy Longing” by Ronald Rolheiser: Canadian, theologian, specialist in spirituality and systematic theology. This is one of those books that was recommended to me over and over and now, finally, I am leaning into it.

I’ll share more here as we go along.

We are Restless or Maybe We're Just Human

You will hear it said twelve-step meetings—“We were restless and discontent.”  The accusation comes from the Big Book and recovering people often turn that accusation on themselves and others.

Sometimes I hear this injunction against restlessness said with a suggestion that if one’s sobriety was better we’d not be restless anymore. Or sometimes, more damming, if one worked the steps the “right” way that that damned restlessness would slip away.

But that attitude and belief disregards what philosophers and great theologians have taught us about being human. Epictetus and Aristotle and even Saint Augustine suggested that restlessness is part of the human condition. Augustine famously wrote, “God, you made us as we are and we are restless until we rest in you.” Augustine was not writing about addicts. He was describing the people that God created.

So, I wonder sometimes if it isn’t a kind of arrogance to suggest that if we alcoholics just did our program right then our restlessness would leave? And if it left us then we’d be, what?—better than other human beings? Where’s the humility in that?

If restlessness is part of God’s recipe for human beings, and if we are to be restless until we rest in God, then we might not want to suggest that we have a special path or that we are somehow smarter than God.

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.

Restlessness

There is a description, a sort of accusation, in the Big Book about the restlessness of alcoholics. It is supposed that recovery will help us be less restless. We assume that our restlessness is a flaw and that with enough prayer, surrender or good works we can fix that. But what we are fighting is our humanness. Saint Augustine wrote that “we are restless until we rest in God.” Even the saints were restless. Fighting or trying to eliminate restlessness is not the point, accepting it is.

The best advice I ever got from a therapist is: “Humility is accepting your humanity.”

We are human. We struggle. We are restless.