Daily Reprieve

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

This is my favorite part of the poem.  I have a few other quotes that go with this for me:

”This above all: to thine ownself be true,
 And it must follow, as the night the day,
 Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
                         -Shakespeare-Hamlet

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge,
That myth is more potent than history,
That dreams are more powerful than facts,
That hope always triumphs over experience,
That laughter is the only cure for grief,
And I believe that love is stronger than death.

~Robert Fulghum, The Storyteller’s Creed

I love the paradoxical statement “If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.” 

I can take this thought down so many streets and alleyways.  But if I were to limit it to recovery, I would have to see that if I am to ever learn to be truthful with others, if I am to ever have anything of substance to offer, I must be true to who I am.  And that is a big part of the process, digging out the clutter of co-dependant shoulds and fearful pretense to find the best version of me.  I think most of what I would say in the company of these quotes would be distractive ramblings.  I just like to breath in the reality these words express.  Freedom.

I finally finished that 8th step today. And I picked up my 90 day.

This entry was posted on October 11, 2009 at 4:06 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.