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i want, and i want it now! or better put, at least on some days **PATIENCE my a$$, i gonna go out and kill something!**
yes i am still wired for immediate gratification, for expecting the unrealistic or the unreasonable and for the world to be my oyster as it were. saying that, i NEED to and WANT to temper that statement, just a bit. it is true, those attitudes are still part of my make-up, BUT they are not the FORCE they once were. through the process of working the steps, living a program of recovery and generally applying spiritual principles in all my affairs, i have learned to have a bit of patience. i have learned to evaluate my expectations and entitlements. i have learned that in order to achieve some of the things i WANT, i sometimes have to let others go. yes it is true, i am still an addict, and in my opinion,part of being an addict is the childish attitude that i need all my desires met in the here and now, and my needs, well those are to be expected, just like my parents did, when i was just a wee lad. ironically growing up after forty, makes this whole journey just a tad more difficult and certainly more than a little painful, as the sting of disappointment in those early days, nearly took me out.
which brings to my mind, my incarcerated peer. he has been struggling for over a decade to extricate himself from the grips of the 20th Judicial system, ads well as active addiction. why that struggle has been so tedious and full of pitfalls and pratfalls, i cannot say, because i am not him. what i can say, is sometimes i hear an echo of a refrain that went through my head and my life, many., many moons ago, namely that this whole staying clean gig was not giving me quick enough results. what i wanted, back in those days, is what i saw other members already having.i EXPECTED that if i got clean, i would have get a six-figure career, a beautiful wife, a ginormous house, a new car and i would be happy all the days of my life. when those expectations failed to materialize in the first ninety days of recovery, i was more than a little pissed off! after all the effort i put in, where was mine? where was the fVcking pot of gold, and who did i have to jump to get it?
the answer is contained in this reading. what i needed to do, was accept that while all of the expectations may have been reasonable, none of that sh!t was going to happen overnight. in fact, it took way more time for me to get those things and even then, some of those expectations, desires, goals and dreams had to be deferred, as i put in place the other pieces i needed. that beautiful wife? i had to learn to love, forgive and esteem myself first. six figure income? that took an education and working bin the trenches.new car and beautiful house? had to get the job first and yet, even through all the lessons i had about deferring my desires, i still at the core expect things to go my way, all the time, in this instant and have little petulant frenzies when they do not. difference is that today, i see how ludicrous all of that is, and after a minute can laugh out loud at my silly freakin' behavior and move on to the next right thing, which just happens to be to shower off and get ready to face my public, admiring or not.

∞ DT ∞