Blog entry for:

has been given more than just a sense of purpose. WARNING: there may be a few daisies, rainbows and unicorns ahead, be wary as i would hate to catch anyone off guard. i could start off about how this reading does not fit in my spiritual view of the world and then go about molding it to do so. yes i could, instead i choose to just move forward with the notion that kept coming to the surface as i “sat” this morning, a sense of purpose. when i think about a purpose to my life, i smile recalling a line in the movies The Jerk, where Steve Martin discovers his “special purpose.” all kidding aside, coming to uncover any sort of purpose in my life, has often felt useless. what does it really matter? i am after all clean and living a program of recovery, why should i fret and fuss about having some purpose in my life?
once i never concerned myself with the question of leading a purpose-filled life. i just went upon my merry tripping all over those who were around me and blithely ignoring the wake i left behind. i may not have been a tornado force influence, but getting and using and finding the ways and means to get more, certainly left little regard for any other purpose to my life. my purpose in active addiction was to score my next high and all other higher ideals, were subjugated to being a far distant second place. any sense of purpose to living had been stripped from my conscious self and i really did not seem to care.
coming to my first meeting and the events surrounding those days at the end of active addiction, my sole life's purpose was to use when i could and evade detection of such use, from the powers that were ruling my pitiful life. i has long learned how to look like something i was not, but had never thought that looking abstinent would become such a full-time job and consume so much of my very limited power and resources, and yet it was what i was all about. those seven months of compliance and using and getting away with it, certainly made me feel as if i had a purpose in life, dark and twisted, but a purpose nevertheless. when it all came crashing down in September, shortly after the last time i used, i was set a drift in a sea of anger, resentment and self-pity, and certainly no purpose for living at all. i was defeated but determined never to admit or show defeat, that transformation would take another eighteen months.
skipping ahead, as the hour grows late, today my sense of purpose comes from sharing my Experience, Strength and Hope, with the still suffering addict. whether or not they “get” what i am trying to give away, is not the point. my HOPE is always that they will be able to find something to latch on to and join the recovery journey. as i sat in the meeting yesterday afternoon, listening to all the cross-talk and advice, what i felt once i got past my self-centered righteousness and pique, was a sense of why i was there. it was not to “convert” anyone to the “true” faith, it was to give them a glimpse into a purpose-filled life, mine. this morning, that was what kept coming to the top, for the perhaps the first time ever in my life, i feel a sense of purpose. although i have often denied the “need” to feel as if i had a purpose to my life, now that i see and feel it, i wonder why i was so dismissive of it. what i come to, as i approach the end, is that why i would not accept that i wanted to have a purpose for living is not relevant any more, more than likely it was a Jedi mind trick to keep me from being similar to my peers. the fact is, today i feel the joy of living a life with purpose and i can move forward into the real world, carrying that sense of gratitude with me, at least until i get out on County Line Roada and have to start dealing with the rest of the story.

∞ DT ∞