ACCEPTANCE MONTH: DAY 17: “Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.” ― Jack Kornfield
Our culture is broken around this concept. Western philosophy and religious practices embrace ideas about “forever” and “always”. That is impossible for humans or anything in this world.
There is no constant, no sense of “always” in life. We get so screwed up because we attempt to have friends “forever and ever”; which creates a tension that is not going to foster a real relationship. We may know someone over the course of many years; certainly, some of our family members will be around for a very long time with us, if we survive.
But the idea of being with them, forever is a lazy concept. We get lazy in thinking that there is always time tomorrow for what we cannot get to today. That is a set of false ideas on top of false ideas. Time is not a never-ending by-product of life.
A life can be 20 minutes in some cases. Or it can be 13 years, or 80, or 35. There is no set of rules governing time and how long a lifetime will be. We cannot quantify the age of someone’s life, because that is an unknown factor.
Healthy people get sick or die suddenly in an accident. Sick people linger for years with illness and pain. Because we cannot absorb these basic truths, we cannot absorb the concept of the term of a relationship, a marriage, a contract.
My agreement with my husband was that we would remain married “one day at a time, until we no longer work to grow down the same path with each other.” No shame, no manipulation, no expectations. An open-ended relationship that we did not promise “forever” or until “death do us part” kinds of things, although the death thing is what ended it.
We need to make the commitment to the person that we will grow in the direction they are growing as we get older. That is possible. However, most folks are not committed to the relationship at all. They are committed to being married and believe that is the end of the line.
Or we make a commitment to an employer without regard to the idea that everything in this Universe is fluid and moving and changing all the time. We need to be aware of the shifts and moves and changes that are going to come and navigate those while remaining committed to the process of being fluid enough to grow or go.
That is also the contract, although unstated, in recovery. We will uncover, discover and discard a lot of material about ourselves in the process, as long as we continue moving through the process. When we begin to sit still and think we have completed anything, we are doomed.
I believe relapse is what happens when we begin to believe that there is a resting, still space in recovery. I have done deeper and more important work at 30 years of recovery than was ever possible before. I am so happy not to “arrive” or to have done enough recovery for “forever”.
This process has certainly shifted some very long-term relationships right out of my life and some new ones have come. That is the process I understand and embrace here. Change, always change. Beginning and ending all things that come and go, feast and famine, flood and drought.
The ebb and flow of the tide. There is no stillness in the ocean. Sometimes a calmness of movement, but movement nonetheless. Grasping this is the most difficult thing. Knowing we cannot promise more than what we have. I have this moment. I promise myself to recover…and in this one…and in this one…it is a process, not a destination.
Dolphin Hug 