Being Informed.

I don't watch the news. I've learned that watching the news leaves me feeling:
angry
horrified
disgusted
depressed.

I'm well aware of man's inhumanity to man, and to his fellow creatures on the earth, I don't need a daily reminder via my tv. I've pretty much stopped admitting to this non-watching of the news, because I decided years ago that if one more person asked in amazement, "Don't you want to be informed?" I'd start screaming.

No, I don't want to be informed of the latest rapes, murders, thefts, muggings, beatings, deadly car crashes, wars, abuses, or any of the other millions of horrific actions people choose to take on a daily basis. I can't do a damn thing about any of it, so I don't want to hear about it. It's all completely beyond my control; a steady diet of the terrible things people do, just depresses me, and triggers my negative thinking. I start to view the world, and mankind, as hopelessly evil and corrupt. If that's the case, then what's the use of any of my small effort? It's a teaspoon to an ocean. Etc, etc, until I'm in such a state of gloom, that it takes concerted effort to climb back out of the pit.

Now and then, I will have a conversation with someone who is determined to talk about some horror from the news, and who wants to describe it to me in full gory detail. I've learned to say -politely - that I don't want to hear about it, please.

I've moved far and away past the point of caring if others think I'm wierd for not watching the news, or reading the paper. I had a conversation with someone last night, who said that I should watch the news "so I knew what people are capable of."
I learned that in my childhood; it's not a lesson one is likely to forget. Daily reminders of it aren't good for me, they take me down a road I do not wish to travel.

I've worked to develop a more positive attitude about life. Watching the news makes this positive attitude impossible for me to sustain, so I don't watch the news. It's a simple fix.  Sometimes life really is that easy, but we complicate it unnecessarily, because we just cannot accept that the solution has been sitting there in front of us the entire time.

Will I Ever Be Normal?

A program friend was telling me that she likes a certain tv show, except for the fact that at the end, while the credits are beginning to roll, they always break out the booze, in celebration. She went on for a good two minutes in a mini-rant about always needing alcohol to mark achievments, yada yada yada...when she wound down, I asked her why she didn't just switch channels before it reached that point in the show?

She gazed at me for a moment, mouth pursed, brow furrowed, before she burst out laughing - this had truly never entered her head as a option. When she calmed down from her laughing fit, she asked half-jokingly, "Will I ever be normal?"

I asked her, "Who cares? Why strive for conformity, or "normality," when instead, you can strive to be the best version of yourself, with all your attendant quirks and interesting personality traits? We don't love you for your proximity to an artificial baseline of behavior, decreed as "normal;"  we love you for the delightful difference of you."

She grinned at me, saying "I like that, the delightful difference of me."

In my journey in 12-Step, when I have tried to force myself into an arbitrary category, I've ended up bruised around the edges, because there are all these bits of me that do not fit, and cannot be squashed into that tiny spot of "acceptably normal." I spent too many years feeling like some wierdo misfit, because I couldn't make myself feel or think or want what I believed I was supposed to.

Today, I'm working towards not trying to fit myself into any standard but the one with my name on it. The one that I've designed, with the help of Al-Anon, and my Higher Power.

Now if I can just reach a place where I'm willing to let each and every other person on the face of God's green earth do the same, with no input from me, that would be Heaven, don't you think?

Ironies.

In trying to lessen my load a bit, I decided to not post here for a week, and let a few other daily routines lapse - not posting is the only one I miss. I've only been writing this blog for not quite nine months, but in that time, it has become a part of my morning Al-Anon "setting myself into a positive frame of mind for the day" custom, or at the other end of the day, my gratitude for, and inventory of, the day just lived. As soon as I'd decided to give myself a break from it, I promptly commenced to miss it. I began to suffer the mental equivalent, of the stiff and rusty feeling my joints have, when I miss a day of yoga practise.

So it goes.

I'm going to write, and try to let go of how long or how often; I have always been my harshest taskmaster. If it's only a paragraph, well, that's what it's going to be that day.

The first half of the first sentence in today's reading in Hope for Today runs as follows:

"I was practically consumed with frustration and anger..." This is an accurate description of who I was, when I came into Al-Anon. It's hard to recall what that felt like, because I've changed so much.

This wonderful program has given me a life I'd have never thought possible, with the miseries of my childhood behind me. I am living proof of the fact that what is promised to us in the closing is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth;

"If you try to keep an open mind you will find help. You will come to realize that there is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be lessened."

As a newcomer, I had my doubts about that last bit, because I thought I'd had a far worse time of it than anyone else at the table, and in my childhood, perhaps I did, but my first sponsor taught me that pain is relative. Each person's pain is agonising for them.

I had to take quite a bit on faith when I was new to program, but for some reason, I could trust my sponsor enough to believe her when she said I would get better if I just kept trying. And part of trying was to work to wrest my attitude from the overwhelmingly negative co-ordinates I'd had it set at for most of my life, to a more positive aspect. Gratitude is self-perpetuating - the more we have, the more we notice; the more we notice, the more gratitude we have.

At first, I could only list a few items on my gratitude list - the love of my dog, food, shelter, work. The basics. As time went on, my list became more detailed, and I even found myself feeling grateful to the people who had caused so much of my childhood misery, for things like: teaching me to love classical music. Teaching me that prejudice is wrong. Teaching me to be responsible to the animals in my care. The dog had to be fed, and her outside area cleaned up, her water freshened, before we sat down to eat. She was dependent upon us for everything, so we had to look after her properly, and before we looked after our own needs.

I began to let go of my black-and-white thinking, which had made me have to demonise them completely. I still don't think they had the right to physically abuse me, but I can see them as flawed and deeply unhappy human beings, instead of monsters. As long as I saw them as monsters, I couldn't get past my own rage. When I began to see them as people stuck in their own awful misery, I could begin to forgive. I forgave for my sake, not theirs. I forgave so that I could step out of that fire of anger which was consuming me, and have a life.

I have Al-Anon to thank for that, and I am full to bursting with gratitude for the life I have now - it's a beautiful thing.

Keep an open mind, you will find help.

Changes.

I won't be posting for a week or so, it's just too crazy here right now, and by the time I get to my blog, I'm so tired I've got nothing to say. Take care, all of you, and see you in about a week.

Contradictions, and Trust.

Standing talking after my meeting last night, someone brought up the recent news story about the 4 employees of the Canadian city of Toronto's Humane Society, who had been charged with animal cruelty. I hadn't heard about this, but when I got home, looked it up online. As well as my feelings of anger and sorrow with regard to the alleged cruelty to the animals, I found myself feeling unsettled for hours afterwards, and not sure why.

This morning, I realise that quite apart from my distress at animals being mistreated, the issue being raised is trust. Whenever it is discovered that the guards of the henhouse have long snouts and bushy tails peeking out from beneath their feathers, if I'm not careful, I can begin to extrapolate from that one issue of untrustworthiness, to viewing the world as a whole, through a miasma of dubiety.

Who can we trust to care for animals, if not the people who work at the Humane Society? I know I'd like to believe that anyone who works at a place with that name, would have the care of the creatures dependent upon them, uppermost in their minds and hearts.

Our society operates largely on trust - we may daily assumptions as to the way the world is being run, and finding out that these assumptions are mistaken, is unnerving. If I'm not careful, this can start my mind off on an old, old mental loop, which has as its main structure, the declaration "You can't trust anybody!"  After a few hundred repititions of this particular loop, I will be feeling anxious, and a thousand times more distrustful than I was at the start - this way of thinking is self-perpetuating.

I know it isn't true; I have people in my life that I give as much trust as I am capable of at this point in my recovery, and that is gallons more than the grudging teaspoon I could give years back when I was relatively new to program. I know there are people I can trust with my heart, and my life, and they will not fail me. I mustn't paint the entire world with the same dark paintbrush. It just blocks the light and obscures my view.

What Did I Mean By That?

Asked by a reader to explain what I meant by "pushing" gratitude in my first post today. Sorry if that was confusing - a program friend in the medical profession uses that expression, and I've picked it up.

When I say it, I mean: to deliberately choose to think only of all the aspects of my life for which I feel gratitude, and when I wander off course, as I will do, into thinking about other things, to wrest myself back to it, and to force myself to think only of my gratitude list.

Practising Gratitude

One of the simplest things I've learned in Al-Anon, is that my thoughts affect my mood.

This sounds painfully obvious, and it is, but it's also a reality that escaped me for all the years of my life before program. I walked around feeling miserable, depressed, angry, frustrated, and all the time, the tape that stimulated those feelings played on a non-stop loop inside my head.

Learning that I could change what I was thinking, and thereby change my mood, was a world-altering event for me.

I have learned that when I practise gratitude, I am happy. Period.

How to do this? Pay attention to my internal dialogue, and when I start to think negatively, stop, remind myself of this truth, and choose to think of that which gives me hope, gives me pleasure, gives me strength, gives me faith.

Choose to think.

 Negative thinking can be satisfying in a horrid sort of way: "I knew that yada yada would happen!" When I'm in that frame of mind, all I want is to be right, I don't care if being right also makes me miserable. In that instant, being right is more important than anything else. Why is this?

I don't know, and I've reached a point in my life where why something happens is far less relevant than the result, and how to effect a different result.

I can watch my mood shifting, slowly at first, I grant you, because a body at rest tends to remain at rest, and my heavier moods are just that - heavy, and hard to shift. But if I put my whole self into it, and really push gratitude, momentum begins to work, and pretty soon I'm feeling giddy with the delight of having seen program work for me, one more time.

I'm tremendously grateful. I woke up grumpy today, got a message from our realtor that made me even more grumpy, and then was standing looking at my little dog, and she did her happy dance, asking to be picked up - a little sideways wiggle of that silly long body on short legs. And that was enough to remind me that I've got a choice - I can push gratitude, and within a very short time, feel as I do writing this - hugely grateful for all my blessings.