Intentions

...I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.

Leslie Jamison, “The Empathy Exams”

The first nine steps gave us a structure for cleaning up the messes in our past. Step Ten gives us the opportunity to stay clear-eyed about our present day situation. In some ways, it is preventative medicine for living a reasonably happy and peaceful life. No matter how many steps we take, distress is not eliminated from our lives because life is inherently horrible and distressing at times. It does decrease our chances of more self-sabotage and the self-inflicted wounds we endure if we are not attending to and taking responsibility for our lives.

What do you need in order to live a more intentional life? I use a planner to help me stay intentional. It’s geeky but effective. I have a habit tracker I use to help me stay accountable. Each morning I do not have to get up and think, “What are my intentions today?” because I set my intentions for the month. I do look at my habit tracker and note the behaviors I chose to track that I chose to support my intentions for the month. I monitor, tweak, modify, reduce or expand my list as I learn more about myself and God. This is one way to work out intentions. What do you do?

A Bigger Perspective

A Greek-Armenian teacher named George Gurdjieff (1866-1949) wrote:

“When a man comes to realize the necessity not only for self-study and self-observation but also for work on himself with the object of changing himself, the character of his self-observation myst changes...he must begin to see himself, that is to say, to see not separate details, not the work of small wheels and levers, but to see everything taken together as a whole - the whole of himself such as others see him.

For this purpose a man must learn to take, so to speak, “mental photographs” of himself at different moments of his life and in different emotional states; and not photographs of details, but photographs of the whole as he saw it. In other words, these photographs must contain simultaneously everything that a man can see in himself at a given moment. Emotions, moods, thoughts, sensations, postures, movements, tones of voice, facial expressions, and so on. If a man succeeds in seizing interesting moments for these photographs he will very soon collect a whole album of pictures of himself which, taken together, will show him quite clearly what he is.”

After years of hiding and shame, it is a new sort of problem to work at seeing ourselves clearly. Not all days will be pleasant; but most days will be better than we might imagine once we get in the habit of living each minute knowing that we will review it again in a few hours. Eventually, because of what God can and will do with a willing person, our reviews might even delight us!

Meditation Moment

As painful as my addictions have been, they would have been even more painful had I not learned anything from them, but fortunately I have.

Sid Caesar, Caesar’s Hours

It seems to me that we are all experiencing an extended moment of clarity. A virus stalks our nation and the world. It shows no mercy and affects us all - regardless of race, gender, or social status. It is a painful time.

And it will be a more painful time if we do not learn anything from this collective suffering.

Today, breathe and ask God to enlighten us all. Teach us, O Lord, what you would have us learn during a season that disrupts our complacency, our patterns, our preferences; that threatens our sense of safety and security.

The Present Day

When we use Step Ten as part of our recovery, the results are remarkable. We who have lived unconsciously for so long find ourselves waking up in real time. We have a structure that requires us, all day and every day, to look into our hearts. We discover what pains us. We refrain, under all circumstances, from passing our distress onto other people.

We figure out how to relate our own experiences to that of others. For example, I am especially sensitive to the life of baristas because I happen to have a son who was one. I understand that he paid his rent each month in part because people place tips in a tip jar. They do not have to leave a tip, but if they stopped, my son could not pay his bills.

Substance use disorder is isolating. Recovery creates a culture of interdependence, service and respect. Without a sense of reciprocity, how would any of us find freedom from our enslavement to our dependencies?

Meditation Moment

Let all such fancies, illusive and destructive, be banished henceforth from your thoughts forever. Resolve, and keep your resolution; choose, and pursue your choice.

Samuel Johnson, quoted in The LIfe of Samuel Johnson

Do not know how to evaluate your life? Of course you do!

First, decide what you value. Then pursue it.

If it turns out you have chosen poorly, (see The Last Crusade - Indiana Jones’ last movie if you want a terrifying visual) no worries. Choose again.

Keep choosing and committing and evaluating and rechoosing.

Breathe and ask God to help you choose wisely.

Be Indiana Jones - not the bad guy who chose poorly.