Daily Reprieve

I am tired – but I spent some time talking with my two young ones last night.  I enjoyed it.  I have been working to understand what my personal values are, what I want to be in me no matter what.  I came up with this list, while talking with them:

1.  Gront – the value of the collective power of human beings, the ability to unite, the realization that we are all in this together.  It involves tolerance but goes beyond that.  It goes beyond social empathy.  It is using the hidden connections we have to mutually empower one another.

2.  Integrity – I want to always be true to my word, a man of honor.  I want others to be able to trust and depend on me based on my track record.

3.  Creative Inspiration – I have a saying taped up in my kitchen from Albert Einstein; “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of art and science.  He who knows it not, or can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.”  I want to truly live until I die, and I think this is essential to achieve that.  It is what provides faith and intensity to life.

4.  Courage – I have heard this described as the ability to put oneself into the zone of uncertainty, and does so on a regular basis.  It is the habit of overcoming our personal fears.  It paves the way for purposefulness and adaption in life.  It is what allows me to ride the winds of chaos.

5. Clarity – When I seek to understand, I am seeking clarity in pursuit.  When I seek to be understood, I seek clarity in presentation.

6.  Persistent Endurance – Christ said to knock, and keep on knocking, and the door shall be opened to you.  Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  So who’s right?  Maybe they are both saying the same thing and I just haven’t caught the paradoxical truth yet.  Maybe you have to really want something, willing to express the quiet desparate insanity of continuing on …I like what Rocky Balboa said to his son; “Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you’re no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that! I’m always gonna love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You’re my son and you’re my blood. You’re the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, ya ain’t gonna have a life.”  This is life on life’s terms to me.  The quiet burning insanity of continuing to seek even when you haven’t been able to make it happen the 100 times before.  I want to be that crazy man in the ring who just want lay down and die.

7. Power – this one was a hard one to nail down, and I attempted to find another term to express it.  Power as a value is what provides for things such as self-respect, the ability to defend what you believe in, and to dwell in a position of strength.  I value power in all its forms.  I desire to be personally powerful.  This is a paradoxical value when mixed with the need for powerlessness in the program of recovery.    Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”  Truly knowing yourself seems to me to be essential to obtaining power from the web of the universe. 

Anyway, enough of that for now.  Talk later.

This entry was posted on June 16, 2008 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Journal, Life, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.