Canadian Parliament Building at Christmas
Wishing all my blog buddies a great Christmas or whatever you celebrate this time of year.
Glad to be clean, sober, happy, warm, fed, loved, sane, serene, forgiven and recovering. What more could anyone ask for?
Gratefully,
Chaz
Is this a luxury we can afford?
What ultimate value does it provide? Is it not a shallow, short-term reaction to an extreme of pain or injustice?
Does it equalize? Does it heal? Does it close anything out? Or does it just perpetuate?
I don’t have answers. There are people I feel have wronged me and I do not care for them. I have painful memories…. at this stage of my recovery, the best I can do is surrender the hurts and not stew on them. Let the hurts pass through and fade in the rear view.
If I feel them again by experiencing the memory again… let it pass again. And again and again and again. 70 x 7 was once suggested.
I do not know where all of this will end up. I just know that I do not wish to be vengeful. It just seems to be there.
I believe an inescapable force in the universe is the Law of Attraction. The law of sowing and reaping. We reap what we sow.
We do not attract what we want so much as we attract what we are. Because what we are affects others. We give it out whether we know it or not. Whether we mean to or not.
If I am vengeful, I will attract vengeance. I don’t want it… therefore I should not be it.
Thank God for the gift of grace. Thank God, he has bigger plans, visions, and purposes than I do.
Thanks God for someplace to go with my pain, anger, and injustice…. other than vengeance.
Ciao.
Chaz
I am amazed at how often challenges and pain derive from self-deception. Beliefs about self, others, and life that turn out to be incorrect. Believing errors, overstatements, understatements and lies.
It is often said that “truth sets us free”. Why? Is it because if we believe untruths that we stay stuck, bound, imprisoned to whatever dysfunction the untruth brings?
Alcoholism is a great example. The untruth is that drinking will solve our problems. The more we tend to believe this, the more damage we do and the deeper in we get. At least for those of us who are prone to alcoholism.
What about other matters such as pride? Believing we are something we are not… more capable than we actually are… tougher than we actually are… more clever than we actually are. Do these deceived beliefs not keep us stuck in problems? Are the opposites also not equalling imprisoning… believing we are less than we actually are?
If we are not dealing with truth, we are not on the pathway to the way out. We remain in harms way. We remain in pain. Others remain in pain.
Today, I am grateful that people and circumstances shook me to begin to wake me from so many of my self-deceptions. It is a long process to which I do not believe there is a clear end. But the journey is amazing. The unfolding and opening up of life are amazing.
I am glad to know what I am and what I am not. What I am capable of, and what I am not. Then living in those truths. Discovering the truths may be painful, but the result is worth it.
To me, the processes of shedding self-deception and moving toward living in truths are what recovery is about.
Ciao.
Chaz.
How do we get better at things? The only way I have discovered is by practice and experience.
I have found that life’s trials give us skill-refining practice and experience.
How does a boxer get better? Is it not through sparring? And through fights with other boxers? I doubt if there is a boxer out there who ever got any better at his skill without going through much sparring and many fights.
Tiger Woods Masters 2009
What about golf? Hasn’t Tiger Woods’ exceptional skill level created a new standard of achievement for today’s professional golfers?
I have been going through some hellish circumstances lately. Work has been very challenging. Our company is finally feeling the effects of this recession.
I have had sleepless nights, and grouchy moments. Depression and anxiety have been knocking at my door a lot lately.
If ever there was a time to accept that this is a time to practice and refine my skills of recovery, this is it. In fact, keeping a “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” mindset, actually makes the trials somewhat thrilling.
Just like Phil Mickelson and Geoff Ogilvy improving their games by playing head to head with Tiger Woods, maybe this is my time opportunity to strive to be better than I ever was.
Any dead fish can float down stream or be swept around by the tide. But the strong can swim against the current.
So maybe this isn’t just tribulation. Maybe this is just another training experience to become something better than I ever was.
Ciao
Chaz
We often “compare our insides to other people’s outsides”. And in doing so, beat ourselves up for not being as talented, attractive, successful, happy or likeable as them.
By this I simply mean that we often compare the little we know of others by observing their limited external appearances to our comprehensive internal knowledge of ourselves including our secrets, hurts, and shortcomings.
My blog friend, Lores ( www.maladjusted.wordpress.com) recently posted about how some people appear successful on the exterior while we appear to ourselves as unsuccessful.
This is somewhat ironic because my wife and I recently gave up watching CSI Miami. From time to time, we sit together after our long work days and unwind with an episode. More recently, we began laughing at the overwheming and continuous BS portrayals of life.
According to the show, the vast majority of people in Miami are rich, young, and attractive. Oh ya, and all the women somehow are able to show cleavage and none has yet to be groped by a perpetrator or colleague.
Lets start with the most conspicuous character…. the lovely Miss Calleigh Duquesne.
She has the amazing ability to strut onto a crime scene in heels and flowing, dangling hair that never goes out of place. And of course, cleavage to spare.
A particularly unique talent she often displays is her ability to walk on a sandy beach with said heels.
I know some female cops. Not one of them shows up to work dressed like this. Unless they are undercover doing entrapment.
I wonder how many women working careers compare themselves, whether knowingly or unknowingly, to an unrealistic portrayal like Calleigh?
We also have Dr. Alexx Woods.
Now come on…. would the Miami Dade County really allow their coroner to let her hair dangle into the blood pool of a crime-scene corpse?
I am sure most of us didn’t even notice there was a corpse in the picture did we?… cause I eye got drawn to those ever-visible…. tits!
But she did put gloves on…. Thank God! We wouldn’t want to taint evidence or be unsanitary!
Ok, so help me out…. she took time to choose her ensemble, wrestle her boobs into an over-worked push-up bra, apply makeup (presumably in the hummer on the way to the crime scene), put on latex gloves, but didn’t tie her hair back?
It is not just the female characters that set the unrealistic expectations.
Jonathan Togo’s character, Ryan Wolfe, continually shows up in the trendiest ensembles, complete with neck tie? Since when?
Check out this little Gucci number Wolfe is sporting.
Who pays the dry cleaning bill when the arterial spray lands on his lapel?
Television and entertainment has been painting these unrealistic perspectives for as long as they have existed. We all know their portrayals are unrealistic, yet I still wonder to what degree repeated viewing continual bombards the subconscious and leaves us feeling like crap?
Is it any wonder depression, anxiety, suicide and body image/eating disorders are rampant when we continually feed our minds with these impossible standards?
I will say that I was encouraged when the Wolfe character came out with his gambling addiction, and more recently, the new coroner Dr. Tara Price had her prescription drug problem revealed.
Yet all woven through the greater un-realities of shows like this.
(Note the dangling hair, hoop ear rings, perfect makeup, fashionable clothing, but just to keep it official, latex gloves.)
I am all for striving for the best. My wife and I work hard in our careers, We keep fit, we work on our marriage and parenting, and we are grateful to enjoy many positive results.
Rarely are the realities of these real results meaningfully portrayed on shows like CSI Miami. So rather than scoff at the un-realities and misrepresentations of life, we’re tuning out and focusing on real life and real success.
This gives us real growth and real happiness.
Ciao.
Chaz
