Monday, March 28, 2011

Powerless Over Alcohol?

The slippage of time remains ineluctable.  I'm not so dramatic as to tell you that I remember the inexactitudes of my youth. I am not such a perfectionist so as to claim progression from there to here.  After all, I was arguably better situated then.  A hard matter to admit.

I also won't try to tell you that I can scan the grey matter of my own brain and foist upward--as if in celebration--some exigency, some premonition.  A longing, yes.  A desire?  Without question. Excitement, though, as once filtered through my retinas to allow the blissful intermingling of senses and inertia?  No, nope, not like before.

There's a claim that we like to make.  It has to do with control.  It has to do with having control over one's life.   Perhaps we can modify it to some degree--like maybe whittle it down to 15% control?  No, no, that won't work either.  Not having control over alcohol?  That can overcome all 15% of control we might assume, though it need not.  What's really scary is the bigger claim.  That we have no control at all.  That what we have is but a few kernels of sand stuck on the moisture on our palms, and even those are a bit of a nuisance, when we get right down to it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think it has something to do with this: Sometimes we have choices to make about our actions, we can narrow it down to the perceived choices, and then decide which choice we will pursue. We don't always see all of our choices, that is one way in which we don't have control. And we cannot possibly see all the forces that are at play when we make a choice, what has and is coming together and falling apart. As Sheldon Kopp says, "All important decisions are based on insufficient data". We just don't know. It's true for everyone in every situation. You can start with the fact that no one knows the time and cause of their own death, and the fact that that can be at any moment. That pretty much establishes that we have no control. Yet, at the same time we are responsible for all of our choices, doing the best we can. We have to learn to live with this paradox in order to stay clean and sober.