It's never hard to find reasons to be grateful.
Last night, while driving home from the market, I passed a man who was struggling with about eight shopping carts he was navigating down the sidewalk. He'd take a couple of them at a time and move them ahead 20 or 30 feet, then go back and get a couple more and put them in line behind the ones he'd just moved.
And it wasn't like the carts were empty. Each was piled full of miscellaneous scraps of whatever: blankets, aluminum cans, pieces of wood, quite a bit of cardboard, and other things I couldn't quite identify. Whatever was in them must've been relatively heavy because it seemed like it was taking a lot of effort to move them.
As I drove on I wondered why he was collecting all of that stuff and what he was doing with it. Because being in the recovery business, I automatically default to the idea that he might be an alcoholic or an addict. With perhaps an overlay of some kind of mental illness.
Because the reality is, that anyone who is capable of putting that much effort into moving shopping carts full of junk around town is capable of working pretty hard. Someone who expends that kind of effort to collect a bunch of miscellaneous crap obviously has the energy to work a real job. Especially in today's economy. So I finally concluded that his problems were more mental than anything else.
And I was grateful that it wasn't me out there pushing shopping carts around. I was pleased that I found out almost 28 years ago that if I just quit drinking and shooting heroin and went to some meetings that my life would be great. Which it is.
While I never recommend that we play the comparison game, because we usually end up comparing ourselves with people with yachts and Learjet's, there are times when it is beneficial to realize that there are a lot of people who have problems much worse than the ones we face in dealing with our addictions.
Those of us in recovery have been rescued from ourselves and have found a solution. And if we use that solution in our daily lives we're not going to return to the way we once lived. Instead, we have guidelines that help us direct our behavior when we run into challenges and problems. Instead of turning to a drink or drug when we're facing challenges, we may call our sponsor or go to a meeting. And if we are serious about our lives it's just about that simple.
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