Life

What do I have to be grateful for? Something we ask Cody often. Maybe I'm finally hearing my own words. How about life? Being alive? Isn't that worth some gratitude? I wouldn't be alive if not for certain people. My mother. My nurturing mother. If I were really an island, it wouldn't have mattered that I was nurtured. That I was loved. And my father, Dad, gave me the ability to think. To think and to love. Those are pretty good abilities. I may not have them in the best balance ever. But it is a work in progress. What else can I do? I'm 48. I would hope I know more than when I was 24. Or 12.

I use my addictions to get me through the day. Ironic, I know. I have been trying to replace my addictions with something healthier for quite some time. That is how I've "learned." But the trouble is that the addictions have defined me. Without them, who am I? Not existing is a troubling prospect. It goes back to my first paragraph. I feel my humanity for a variety of reasons. Not all of them are healthy. Some, like love, are. Others, like desperation or loneliness, aren't so much.

I'm supposed to cherish life. Otherwise, I will miss the good stuff. Life may be short, it may be long. But it will come to a close one way or another. Shouldn't I relish every moment, every fleeting moment?

The reason I am up and writing is because I partook in my addiction of choice earlier today. I felt myself sinking, for a change. I was aware of my descent into my abyss, and I consciously counteracted it. I knew I shouldn't. This awareness was unusual. It may have been brought on by a variety of things.

This was interesting. I have been thinking about some of the old wisdom, of sorts, I got from my programs. I was thinking of the one that says you are not a human being having a spiritual experience, but a spiritual being having a human experience. My efforts to be a human being only may have hit their breaking point, once again, I suppose. I have had to keep revisiting and redefining what spirituality means for me over my lifetime. I wonder where I am right now. I wonder if I've found something where I have less resentment for what is seen as spirituality in a lot of circles. Or not less resentment, but more detachment. I don't have to compare myself to these foreign concepts.

I hate being awake right now. I hate being a night owl. I don't love it. I love the mornings. I love the light, the sunshine. I love life. I am just not very versed in it. I haven't had the formal training it takes. Addicts frequently don't.

I think I arrived at this crossroads because of my Karate. It has buttressed me up little by little, and now I'm to the point where I am aware of the obstacles blocking my further development. It probably has changed my capacity for awareness in addition to its healing, strengthening properties.