HONESTY MONTH: DAY 18: “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.” ― Albert Camus
Lies are always prettier. We can find, quite often, those who want something from us and will tell us what we want to hear. The hardest thing to find, in my experience, is someone who will dare to tell us the truth when it is NOT something we want to hear.
My respect goes out to those who are willing to hear the truth. I know a small number of these people. They are the backbone of my recovery around here. They are the ones whose opinions I will seek when I am really in need of a straight answer.
And they are, as well, those who do NOT give me an opinion unless it is asked for. That is double respect, right there. And mutual. We have an agreement, often unspoken, to keep it real but not to just vent our opinions on each other.
We are truth seekers and truth tellers. We may weave fantasies in our minds, doesn’t everyone? But we keep it honest and straight in the world around us.
Because my mind is often so busy weaving fantasies, I require strong adherence to living in the truth. It is always shifting anyway.
When I believe one thing, I must be willing to open that belief and allow it to have air and growth and to change into something else. That happens A LOT in my life, especially since coming around here. Since one half of my life has now been lived in recovery, I am blessed to have some great experience, both before and after, from which to relate.
I do believe, though, that even the truth that does not seem desirable at first take, is often more so when I have had the time to sit with it. Because, I can work with the truth. I can shift something less than pleasant into a great event. I have seen this done so many times; even by me.
When the truth is the foundation of something, it can shift and grow and become a tremendous blessing, even though it starts out with rejection, fear, anger, pain, resentment, or whatever emotion I attempt to fight it off with in my ongoing battle with denial.
This has been true of life events, deaths, endings and losses of all kinds. I did not always embrace them fully on the first take; but became surrendered to them and saw the gifts they all had hiding in the truth that I fought against.
Inventories are wonderful tools for me to see how much I fight life. I fight all things that I do not seem to want at first glance. Then I get surrendered to them and come to see the perfection of their gifts and how they are the best possible way that life could unfold.
This is the process, for me, of recovery. It is not, nor ever was, about drugs and alcohol. They were just another tool I used to keep myself from dealing with truth. Run like hell! But it did not work, ever, and I am glad to know that, because it made relapse something I never wanted to consider.
Many people in recovery say that “relapse is not an option”; but I completely disagree! If it were not, then why continue to do this work?
Because even though I have seen what it looks like leading into relapse (horrible!); I want to be happy, joyous and free! And for every day of the last 31 years, I have been!
Dolphin Hug 