If I was pinned down to put in one word what I hoped to find in recovery, I suppose it would be contentment. Serenity sounds a bit boring, as exciting serenity sounds like a contradiction. Looking back to the time I stopped drinking over 34 years ago, I have found a lot of contentment in sobriety (which also seems like something of a contradiction), but there always seemed to be one or more things that stood in the way of really being content. For most of my early recovery, this was my job. I was a high school teacher for the first three years or so. It seemed a bit like my father's favorite story about a guy who kept slamming his head against a wall. When asked why, he said, "Because it feels so good when I stop." Each school term was spent looking forward to the next vacation in a similar manner. Then I went became deputy director of a rehab, thinking that becoming a recovery professional was the answer, but it wasn't, as my part-time obsession became a full-time one and recovery from addiction became the answer to all the world's problems. In both cases, and a period of part-time employment at a nursing home that followed, I thought that almost all my problems could be solved by simply finding the perfect job, as I had enough money for my simple needs and wants and didn't really want one of those relationships that seem to be so popular here. At this point I did find the perfect job, as an economics lecturer at what is now Central Queensland University, unfortunately on a one year contract which they were not considering extending from the start. Nevertheless, I did have a job I loved for that period, and was surprised to find that other problems arose to stand in the way of contentment, even though I can't even think of what they were now. For the fourteen years I taught English in Japan, until less than two months ago, I again had nearly a perfect job - underworked, overpaid, with long vacations and the bulk of my "work" consisting of chatting with cute 20 year old girls.Still there was a feeling that I could be content if I could get to more AA meetings in English and didn't have to sit through long, boring college meetings in Japanese which tended to interfere with my right to hang around the college in the morning and stop for lunch on the way home. After moving to an nice Engish speaking community to retire, that seemed to be pretty good recipe for contentment, which I still tend to think it is, but, I got a bit obsessed with the problem of getting a driver's license here, which, until I got it, seemed to block my contentment. I was pretty sure I could be pretty content without driving, and I wasn't sure I really wanted to after my driving instructor took the fun out of it. But repeat a rite of passage I thought I was through with over 45 years ago, fear of failure and lack of confidence. Part of me didn't really want a license and much of the rest didn't even want to try as I could blow it. Also, as with the first time I thought I had a clear shot at contentment, I seem to need something to obsess on. It is a bit like winning the cold war and then fearing global warming. My largest problem at any given time tends to get magnified out of all proportion. I recall my first summer school vacation in recovery when I was freed from my job for about eight weeks. Then, to fill my worry vacuum that I got so scared that I might forget to return some library books that I took them back the next day without reading them. I am slowly coming to see that there could always seem to be something in the way of contentment, and I won't find it if I keep waiting for those things to get out of the way. I need to find contentment even with those things that seem to prevent me from finding it - sounds like acceptance. Nothing but sunshine is another way to discribe drought. For a long time, I thought time was the answer and people seemed to say that everything gets better and better in sobriety, presumably until we die of excess serenity. I now see that some things do, such as there always being room for spirtitual growth, but a lot of things go over the hill in time. I am about as content as I get when I accept that things may or may not get better, but they are good enough now. A bit over three years ago, I went to Sydney for three weeks. I has long been my favorite place to visit, a sort of spiritual home town as I got into AA, NA and my religion there, a predictable natural high. I realised during my last trip there that there was nothing there that I don't have in the small Tasmanian city I live in, aside from more meetings, and I was pretty eager to get back. Since that trip, I have been almost continually been happy and content, not wishing I was anyplace else or doing anything else, content with living in the present in this little part of the world. There is nothing I wish I had, or wish I didn't. In times when my contentment seems to slip, I know my attitudes have and am generally able to get them back where they should be, knowing that life happens and I just need to accept whatever come along. It helps to be involved with a few things that seem more important than me, as contentment seems to come at times when it doesn't matter whether I am happy or not. I have learned that the reward for living a good and sober life is a good and sober life and am content with just doing that. |