Thursday, November 19, 2015

The Ripples of Our Recoveries - A Postette

"People get ready, there's a train a comin' | You don't need no baggage, you just get on board | All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin' | You don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord" ~ People Get Ready - Curtis Mayfield
I am not sure I fully grasp the concept or usefulness of social media, though I am getting close. I know I have connected in unexpected and wondrous ways with people worldwide via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Occasionally I'll see a cartoon on a post or tweet that will be a HaHa moment as opposed to those Ah-Ha's of deep insight very deep people seek during moments of deep introspection.

Sometimes I just need a laugh.

I was recently tweeted (sic) to a cartoon depicting two riders on opposite sides of a train travelling along a mountain ridge towering above a lake as picturesque as one could ever imagine. The passenger on the ridge side saw only darkness and gloom, rock after rock passing dangerously close to his window, a continuously foreboding scene of peril. His fellow passenger was witness to the expanse of the valley, a lake teaming with life above and below with mountainsides folding in one after another in the distance creating an endless cascade of valley after valley after valley.

These were two riders on the same train with totally disparate perspectives on life, one dread filled and depressed, the other, as full of wonder as a child experiencing her first taste of watermelon.

You might call this an Ah-HaHaHa! moment.

This train scene is the perfect metaphor for the hope living our lives can bring to our children who have stumbled into the vortex of addiction. We all know the addict's outlook. It is a perspective born of zero possibilities. This is understandable. When the initial payoffs for leaving the comfort zone of The Addiction are withdrawals concomitant with nightstick-like pain into every body part, the incentives for recovery can be few or nonexistent.

It is the trap of addiction. This is a life no one ever consciously desires yet once imprisoned, for the addict, it can be an existence seemingly impossible to escape. We realized this once we were able to separate our children from The Addiction.
Love the addict. Hate The Addiction.
We are travellers on similar but much different pathways - riders on the same train. We see the lake vistas, our children only bear witness to the crag. There is no reason for us to move ourselves to the other side. We even avoid the nausea-inducing seats facing backward where we can watch the cinemas of the what-has-been obscuring the what-can-be.

One day our children might take that glance to the sunlight, to the windows of the possibilities we see and live each day. This may be a first step for our boys, an entry to an initial epiphany for our girls to embrace what The Universe, the Great Creator, God has available to all of us.  There is no need for coaxing. The sunlight reaches all the way across the aisle of the passenger car, as does the moonlight off the lake and snow-capped mountaintops far in the distance of our vistas.

And they know, they know it is there. This other side awaits them. All we can do is to keep open the window shade, continue loving them while we live our lives as fully and dynamically as possible each day. One day they may notice. They may want some of what we have discovered.

They may just join us to view our vistas.

There's plenty of room for both of us!
"Smile warmly at everyone you meet today and make a difference in the collective energy of the planet." ~ Marion Ross, PhD
... keep coming back