Day11

October 30, 2007

Life is just what happens to you
while you're busy making other plans
John Lennon

Interesting how alcohol affects our perception of time. We can fill up so much space in our lives doing and saying things we can't account for, that eventually we may wonder if we aren't living parallel lives. One is a fearless creature who roams the city by night and acts without fear or thought of consequences, and the other who is in charge of suffering.

Life has slowed down since I've been sober. I'm becoming mindful again of the things I used to dream about that has for many years been quieted by my other more immediate and self-gratifying part of self. Alcohol activates this ghost in the machine, this imp of the perverse. That part of us that wants to say whatever it wants to say, approach scandalous looking women, vanquish the loud-mouth at the bar, and perhaps most importantly move through life without fear or regret.

But this is a lie, because the sufferer in you inherits this regret like a long-suffering battered spouse. This is the part of you that must make apologies, settle tabs, suffer headaches, and make sense of what remains of the tornado.

Is it possible to access the fearless part of self, without these dangerous repercussions? For most people who drink my guess is no. Alcohol represents the purchase of bottled courage that unfortunately never lasts, and leaves you wondering why you've traded away so much for the purchase of these magic beans. What courage you did summon you've forgotten about, but still, that irrational part of you remembers it differently, and feels that this alcoholic imago may surprise us despite his poor track record.

So for today at least I've worked on integrating these parts of self and take risks and chances without a visit to the alcoholic gas pump. I'm finding that engines can run on other things, alternate fuels, although I'd be lying if I said I knew what they all were.

One of my favorite movie moments comes in Fellini's 8 and a Half, where the lead character's thoughts, worries, and anxieties are all overwhelming him, when suddenly he thinks to himself "and yet" and then floats above his problems on the clouds of a wonderfully, creative daydream. The human brain can do this, can take us away, with these parts that are mystical, powerful, and creative. I too would like to float away from my reptilian brain for a while. I know it exists, I've been there, lived there, and had some short tantalizing glimpses of what life can be like.

I often use the metaphor in therapy from the movie The Wizard of OZ, that everything we seek and desire is already inside of us. We must however, be willing to do the work, to scrub the floors, and find these resilient and enduring pieces of our construction. This is when life can cease being survival and begin becoming adventure. Today, for a moment, I have been dusted of some of these long-neglected parts of self. I don't want to waste any more time.