Restoration
Everything I need is already within and surrounding me.
Everything I need is already within and surrounding me. That doesn't mean that changes shouldn't be made, that my state shouldn't be improved. And sometimes we need help to do that, whether that be from the government or from our friends and family. But the wholeness of life is right there at every turn when we choose to face it. Sometimes it hurts, but the pain has meaning, offers instruction. I'm one to speak. I've been the most miserable, the most self-destructive at times. And yet here I am, more content than I've ever been, with hardly anything to show for it but my adoration and wonder. Which are the two things which connect me to my spiritual core.
Leslie Jamison called her sprawling addiction The Recovering. But her book seemed less of a restoration to a sense of completion, and more like an array of loosely connected realizations. I have decided to talk less about recovery, and more about discovery, during which I’ll be doing a lot of uncovering.
That little shift from recovery to Uncovery is a big step for me. Sure, there are lost things I need to discover. And as I go through the experience of being a conscious being in a magnificent world, there are going to be many places where I find broken things which need to be mended. And mend them I shall.
But to go out into the world with only that as an ethos can be a bit dispiriting. It causes me to feel that I’m a lost cause, too far gone, potentially without hope. While it’s true that every day I have to confront the allure of instant gratification, and exercise my self to try a little more delay, that is not the whole of the enterprise. Some of it involves sudden joys, new learning, and even wisdom.
Olympic runner Alexi Pappas talks about the rule of thirds. “When you’re chasing a dream, or doing anything hard, you’re meant to feel
good a third of the time
ok a third of the time
and crappy a third of the time.
If the ratio is roughly in that range, then you’re doing fine. If the ratio’s off — if you feel too good all the time or too bad — then you’ve got to look at [whether] you’re fatiguing or not pushing yourself hard enough.”
Crappy will be there, but it’s only a third. I hear people consistently recount that one of their mantras is “This too shall pass.” Whether it’s a craving to drink, an uncomfortable situation with a family member or coworker, or whatever else might seem like it’s getting in the way of my final restoration, I can contextualize that sensation in the larger narrative of the pursuit of Wisdom.
It’s a goal I’ll ultimately never achieve, but its pursuit is literally worth everything.