Shoulds

I was driving to work today and I was thinking "I should be thinking this way." The "way" I was hoping to be was some tuned-in Buddhist practice, I suppose. I don't completely remember. What did catch my attention is that I'm constantly thinking that I should be thinking in some other way.

Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Judging, judging, judging. Where does it let off?

I don't think it lets off. I think my mind is set up to trap myself again and again in thinking. And the end point of that thinking is that I don't measure up. I'm not a half-empty kind of guy. I'm a completely empty kind of guy. Except when I'm completely full of myself. The more I think about a thing, the more certain I am that I'm not right in some way.

There's a certain attitude in recovery that I recognized long ago, but I keep forgetting and forgetting. So much of the life of recovery is working through pain. If you want to be free of pain, you must become very intimate with it. The problem, of course, is that I am very sensitive to pain and really, really want to avoid it. That is the root, trunk, branch, leaf and fruit of my addiction. Fear of pain keeps me from working through it.

But let's say I take a real honest first step and realize that I can't take it any more, that I am really, truly introduced to my pain in such a way that I want to do something about it. Then I take a really honest third step and agree to do whatever it takes to come into agreement with God's will. In that situation, I am living with pain and it's okay.

I am living with pain and it's okay.

I think that is the ultimate attitude to have in recovery. To deny pain, either the pain of the past or the pain that comes in every day is not serenity. It's a deep denial. Pain is real. That is unavoidable. That pain is unavoidable is a first step issue, I believe.

I believe the piece that I am missing in my recover to day is the acceptance of all that is good in my life. I'm missing the gratitude. I'm afraid my attitude towards life and recovery right now is:

I am living with pain and I need to end that by doing something.

Shoulds. I should do this. It should be this way.

The truth is, things are not too bad for me right now. I am doing as well as I ever have and in many respects better than I have ever done. And yet, am I "happier" now than before? No, I'm just about at happy as I've ever been. Yet my "shoulds" and my attitude of scarcity obscure this goodness at all times.

I think the issue is my attitude. I am just looking at the situation as 1) bad and 2) intractable. The truth is that things are 1) good and 2) solvable. Perhaps I find the various solutions distasteful, but they are real and they work.

So, I'm committed to living today (just today, one day at a time) in gratitude. The attitude of gratitude. I think this attitude can work where the shoulds cannot. This feels right in me right now. Right.