November 10 – Burning Up Energy
"We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves." — Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 87
In an episode of Seinfeld, Kramer comes crashing through Jerry’s door with a wild new idea: he’s going to renovate his apartment to look like ancient Egypt. He’s totally consumed with the vision of getting rid of his furniture and building floor levels like an Egyptian palace inside his one-bedroom apartment. Nobody can talk him out of it, no matter how goofy it sounds.
Jerry asks, “You drew up plans for this?”
Kramer grins and says, “No, it’s all in my head.”
Then he challenges Jerry, “You don’t think I can, huh?”
And Jerry fires back, “I know that you can’t, and I’m positive that you won’t.”
As absurd as it is, I can relate.
In my own life, I cringe at how much energy I’ve burned up foolishly the same way. Most of it was spent trying to figure out ways to drink like a normal guy. I plotted, schemed, twisted — never figured it out. The problem was that this thinking bled into the rest of my life. I’d make grand plans, sell my friends and family on them, then end up trying to figure out how to escape the mess I’d made. Vacations I couldn’t afford, moves I couldn’t pull off, new “healthy lifestyles” that never made it past Tuesday. The more fried I got on alcohol, the more insane the plans became.
Each time, I swore I’d learned my lesson. Then I’d start another big plan to fix the last one. Eventually I dug myself into a hole of distrust — and it sucked.
These days, when I wake up, I get to consider my plans for the day. Are they realistic, or are they another set of “levels”? I still have a tendency to take on too much, and before I know it, I’m tired, frustrated, and tempted to escape. There is no chance of following through. The beauty of conscious contact is that I get to slow down. Small goals are enough today. And I regularly have to remind myself, staying sober is enough just for today.
Where in my life am I still building “levels” — wasting energy trying to rearrange things instead of accepting them?
