Today I had lunch with a friend. Tomorrow is his 51st birthday. He also had 25 years of continuous sobriety this month. For birthday gifts, I bought lunch and gave him 3 tickets to a semi-pro hockey game this weekend.
Most of my life, I was okay with buying presents for friends and family. The hard part was giving the gifts to others. Clearly, somewhere along the way I received horrific rejection or devaluation when giving gifts to others, because it took me years in recovery to be able to give gifts to others. Now I am much better about being able to give gifts to others. My happiness does not depend on their response. My gratitude is now about having our relationship together with another person and being able to celebrate the milestones in their lives.
My friend has a good life with wife, kids and a job. Last time I saw him, he was having some problems with a sort of existential angst. Today, he was as happy as I have ever seen him. He is pretty funny when he is really happy. We laughed our way through lunch.
All too soon it was time to go. That is fantastic progress for me in my relationships with others. In the past, a conversation could not end soon enough. Today I have had three conversations with people that were cut short, not by a lack of things to share with each other, but by some external deadline such as a meeting or catching a bus.
I went to a meeting after lunch. It turned out that the timing was such that I got there right when the meeting started. It was a small spiritual experience for me to know that my higher power (HP) had ended our lunch right on time so I would go to the meeting. Being late for a meeting start is a valid enough rationalization for me to not go to the meeting at all.
Today's meeting turned into a discussion on people's relationship with their hp and being restored to sanity. There are many paradoxes at those meetings. Turning our lives over to the care of a mythological entity so we can be restored to sanity is way up there on the paradox charts.
Today's meeting turned into a discussion on people's relationship with their hp and being restored to sanity. There are many paradoxes at those meetings. Turning our lives over to the care of a mythological entity so we can be restored to sanity is way up there on the paradox charts.
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