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I took a run a few days ago through a residential neighborhood, and about three minutes in, I saw something moving on the ground ahead of me.
When I got closer, the thing lifted its head and opened its mouth, and I realized it was a snake. A very badly injured snake.
I stopped and stood beside him for a minute, and he laid his head down and stopped moving. I waited for a little while, trying to figure out whether to move him into the grass, call somebody, do SOMETHING.
I leaned down to try to scoop him up and move him into the grass. But I wasn’t sure what kind of snake it was. I grew up out in the sticks but my snake knowledge is pretty much limited to, “Try to stay the hell away from snakes.” So I left him where he was.
I waited for 30 seconds, unsure of what to do. Finally I realized he was dead. I just stood there and teared up a little. I don’t know if he was actually a he, but he was a living creature and he died in front of me, so I don’t want to say “it” over and over again. I even gave him a name: Frank the Snake.
It was a weird but powerful moment. I kept thinking, Why am I sad right now? There’s a part of my brain that gets insecure for being sad about things that other people might not find sad. That part was whispering to me, “Hey, it’s just a snake. There was nothing you could do, anyway.”
But I was sad. It wasn’t guilt: I’ve always loved animals, so I don’t have any deep down shame about past transgressions against nature.
I ultimately landed on this—that I was sad because it was sad. That deep down, loss of life, any life, matters to me now. I came too close to dying so many times in my life that I have great respect for the miracle it is that I am still walking around. That is a gift of sobriety.
Part of me wishes I could be a little more cold. I’ve found in sobriety that empathy is a double-edged sword. It’s great to feel things, to really be able to absorb when a person or a cat or a snake is in pain. But it also hurts in a way that can be uncomfortable. I think an earlier version of me, before I got into recovery, would have shrugged and said, “Oh well, it’s just a snake.”
But it stung me for awhile afterward, and I thought about that snake the next day, too. I’ll also say, though, that when empathy can be aimed in the right direction, it’s also a beautiful thing. Before I went on that run, I found myself a little irritated with my kids. The past year and a half have been hard on families that are cooped up in close quarters. You just get sick of each other.
By the time I got back from the run, though, I felt 10 percent less aggravated about something that just wasn’t a big deal.
So I like to think I carried that snake with me. I was a little less grumpy the rest of the night with my family, and I hope they realize the debt of gratitude they owe to my old friend, Frank the Snake. RIP, Frank.
ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY
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.
A sponsor and prospective sponsee meet to talk for the first time. After describing his many bouts with the bottle, the would-be sponsee finally asks, “So, what do you think?”
“I think you’re going to go far in this Fellowship,” the sponsor says.
“Wow!” his young charge replies. “Why do you think that?”
“Because you have such a long way to go,” the sponsor says.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2001, Bob M. from Bellingham, Massachusetts)
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