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There’s a new movie that came out this past weekend called “Three Thousands Years of Longing.” It stars Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, and it’s basically a reimagining of the idea of a person getting three wishes from a genie. Swinton is the person, Elba is the genie.
I haven’t seen the movie and I probably won’t—it’s getting mixed reviews. So I have no idea if it’s good or bad or so-so. But I did start thinking about what I would do if I had three wishes. It was a thoughtless fun little exercise while I ran on a treadmill at the gym, but I ended up having a very deep and interesting revelation from it.
Let me start with some obvious wishes that I first thought about… but then decided I would not do.
I would not wish that I could drink like a normal person. I’ve seen the benefits of a life without any drugs and alcohol, and I like it. So I think I would not wish to be a normie drinker, believe it or not. And also, I have a pretty good imagination… but I still cannot imagine becoming a person who can handle drinking like a normal person. As the old jokes goes, “If I could drink like a normal person, I’d do it every day!”
I also would not wish to go back in time and tell myself to never start drinking and drugging. I don’t think it would work, for one. In fact, I am such a contrarian that it might make it worse to know I probably shouldn’t be drinking and drugging. I think my younger self would have taken it as some sort of challenge.
And then, what about wishing to get rid of all drugs and alcohol in the world? It was one of my first thoughts, because I have seen addiction up close and it is devastating. But I don’t know if I would wipe it off the face of the earth. There are millions of people who use alcohol responsibly, and there are millions of people who need opioids for their healthcare.
I also thought about going back in time to prevent myself from getting sick with bacterial meningitis. As I have discussed many times on this newsletter, I got sick with meningitis in college, spent a week in a coma and ended up having multiple amputations on my feet. So I have a significant disability that affects me every single day and causes a lot of pain. I also think getting sick got me introduced to opioids much sooner than I would have, and pushed me into the EZ Pass lane for becoming a raging alcoholic and drug addict.
I did think long and hard about the most obvious wish: Hey genie, give me $50 billion! I kept coming back to that one, so I can’t pretend to dismiss it. The truth is, I would be worried about me as a billionaire, even with 13 years sober, because money can be just as addicting and problematic as some other addictive behaviors for somebody like me. But I do think you need money in the world, and you can do a lot of good in this world with money, so I would think long and hard about that.
I ultimately landed on the idea that I would probably use my three wishes for something like world peace, and getting rid of cancer, and maybe ending hunger on Earth. Stuff that is bigger than me.
When I got done thinking it through, though, I realized that I do sometimes wish a lot of the bad stuff that has happened to me—from meningitis, to the amputations, to the addiction stuff—had never happened. But if I got rid of those things, I might also lose everything I learned about myself, all of the tools I picked up over the years, all of the wisdom. Most of the important lessons I have learned over the years have come from pain.
Later that day, I was at a 12-step meeting where the speaker was very funny. He went out of his way to say repeatedly that sober people are not a glum lot, which is one of my core principles of staying in recovery—I did not get sober to be miserable. And as I looked around that room, at all those former drunks and addicts laughing, it was the most joyous and happy room of any kind I had been in in a long time.
And that got me thinking about how if I hadn’t fallen down so far, I could not have appreciated climbing back up as high as I have. Once you know that pain of hitting rock bottom, everything feels a little more beautiful, a little more humorous.
With all of that stuff in my mind, it dawned on me that I had stumbled onto a pretty important idea—that if I had wishes that I could make with a genie, I basically wouldn't change anything about my own life.
Think about that—I came to the realization this life sitting right here in my lap is exactly the one I want. I often grumble, “Living the dream” when people ask me how I’m doing, but I. Might. Actually. Be. Living. The. Dream.
Holy s**t.
So that propelled me into the weekend—a realization that I have the most awesome life. Now, check back with me in a few days, when we can’t get the kids out the door for the first day of school, and I’ll probably have forgotten it. But for a short time, I felt like I could let the genie stay in the bottle!
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
“ I’m an old dog and sobriety is a new trick.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, from October 2008, by Ed L. of Wrightwood, California)
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