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Sorry, I took a day off last week to go to Disney with my family. I’m back now!
I was at a meeting the other day where the topic was that everything happens for a reason. The person who shared it is a very religious person and believes in that phrase from the perspective of a higher power who oversees his life.
That’s always been the way I interpret that phrase—through a religious lens. I’m not religious but I do have a higher power that serves me well, and on some level, I believe in the idea that the universe oversees my life. That’s not quite the right way to phrase it. But I believe in what goes up must come down, that I need to accept life on life’s terms, that what goes around comes around… I don’t know if others can see a higher power in there, but I can.
But at this meeting, there were some very interesting comments about there being a reason for everything. Someone shared that they don’t view it as God putting someone in your life to teach you a specific lesson, or God causing a bad event so that you will learn something. She said she believes a slight tweak on that: that every person, good or bad, and every thing, good or bad, is an opportunity to learn something. Which means, yes, there is a reason for everything.
I recently had some bad news that really sucked. I’ll share more specifically about it later. But it was a perfect opportunity to be like, Why me? And I do catch myself doing that sometimes. But not very often.
Because I feel a weird sense of gratitude that I think I’m only feeling now because I have been sober for awhile. Almost every bad thing that has happened in my life since I got sober, I later looked back on and found some good that came out of it. Including the fact that I am now grateful to have been an alcoholic and an addict. I have learned so much about living a life I am proud of since I got sober, and I wouldn’t want to give that back.
Sometimes I watch my kids go through difficult things, and they feel like it’s the end of the world, and I realize that it sucks now but they’ll be stronger for it later. I certainly get feeling like it’s the end of the world after a tough conversation or passive-aggressive work email—to this day, as a 46-year-old dude, I have something happen and think it is an absolute catastrophe. Three days later, I forget that it happened, of course, and that usually happens with my kids, too. I remember when my oldest daughter got dumped by a boyfriend for the first time, and the whole house was crying. But I can see how she grew from it later, and she might even see it now, a few years later. She never would have chosen that for herself, but she might not give back the wisdom she gained.
I would offer up this thought as a mini challenge: The next time you feel your neck burning with anger, or feel really fearful about something, or really sad about something, see if it helps to think about what lessons you might be about to learn. When I do that, I often am able to lessen the bad feeling by enough to make it manageable.
But just don’t break up with my kids, ok?
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
"If I had to do it all over again, I'd overdo it all again."
(Credit: Grapevine, May 2008, by Ed L. of Wrightwood, California)
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