Some memes

discern not just right from wrong, but also right from almost right. this was one of those mornings, where the traffic just flowed right along, as i actually enjoyed my cigar and arrived at work, cool, calm and collected. nothing, at least so far, got under my skin and i enjoyed the punk reggae sound that filled my car speakers. the day, however, is still very young and i have yet to interact with anyone, so i will see if this was a fluke or if i am really in the sort of place where i can accept some stuff that comes down the pike. i do, however, digress from the topic at hand and i certainly need to get off this tangent.
when i was in active addiction through my early recovery, everything in the world was either on or off, black or white or good or bad. that everything included me, although i rarely saw myself as “bad.” somewhere down the line, i lost the ability to discern anything more complicated than binary judgements of what was going on. even in recovery, it took a long minute for me to begin to see that just about everything is more complicated than on or off, especially me feelings about those around me. for me, there are certainly some things that are binary, such as i am clean or i am not. no matter how i try and slice and dice that state of being, it always comes down to one or the other, there is no shade of grey between them. i know that many in this world have become enamored with the state of “California Sober.” i do not get that, as for me, that is a state of being that would certainly lead to the use of stronger and certainly more effective means of “getting away from it all.”
the difference, as i see it, from right and almost right, has nothing to do with whether i am clean or not, i just, but it does have a shit ton to do with whether or not i am “in” recovery. when i trash myself and others for not living up to some saintlike standard, i am lapsing into a behavior that is not recovery based. i certainly will not use, but that sort of categorization, leads me into some very dark alleyways. what i am seeing more and more of these days, is that just as i had to stop seeing feeling as good or bad, and accept that they just are, so do i have to allow the world to slide into that same paradigm, of just being, somewhere on that scale of good or evil. learning to see the shades of grey is still a process and emotional reactions to the behaviors and actions of others, propels me back to that world of black or white. i may not be better than that, today, but i can certainly help myself to be just a bit better of recognizing when i have left discernment and am in full-fledged judgment, just for today.

∞ DT ∞