Getting in touch with our sense of meaning and purpose, and then doing something about it -- taking consistent action toward fulfilling this purpose -- is important on so many levels. Obviously, if you're not using your gifts and talents to help make the world a better place, other people will lose out. They won't get the benefit of
what you have to offer.
But the biggest loser in all this will be you.
Living a fully engaged life -- using one's gifts and talents to serve others -- is a prerequisite not only for the average person to have a healthy emotional life.
It's also crucial for people in recovery from addiction. Since many of the readers of this newsletter are either in recovery themselves, or trying to help others who are, let's talk about the recovery implications.
What happens for people who struggle with addiction is that our focus narrows. This is what it means to live in
"trance." Living in trance is not really about being immobilized and staring off, zombie-like, in the distance. Rather, a trance is having the edges of our awareness shrink, so that we're simply focused on a narrow range of perception. We don't see the world accurately, because we tune out most everything. People who get sucked into addiction take insane risks, neglect work and family, and miss social cues because they just aren't paying attention. They're in "trance mode," and
their awareness has narrowed around their addiction, and managing the crises that it creates, so they have little left over for anything else.
And of course, living in this trance mode leaves little energy and focus for engaging in meaningful service to others. For the addict, embroiled in his or her addictive behavior, the mindset becomes: "It's all about
me."
What is true in an extreme way for people in active addiction to the classic substances or behaviors is also true of MANY people in our society to a lesser degree. People like Anne Wilson Schaef have argued that we live in an addictive society, where most everyone deals with some kind of addictive tendencies around one substance/behavior or another. This
is so because our lives today are so stressful, community care and support so often absent, and trauma levels so high for so many of us, that we're all bound to fall somewhere on the addictive spectrum to a variety of things: food, drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, video games, etc.
The more we follow the pull of these things, the more of our time and attention they take; and over time,
we find ourselves living on autopilot, out of touch with the things that we really want in our lives.
Let me share two quotes with you, as reminders of a deep and important truth: We can be more! We can have more! There is an abundance of joy and fulfillment available to us, if we reach for it, and invest our lives in something
meaningful.
"The times when you experience the highest level of fulfillment are the times when you give the most of yourself. The moments that are most meaningful are the moments into which you invest your effort, your energy, and your commitment.
"If you do just enough to get by, that's precisely what will happen -- you'll just get by. Yet when you truly invest yourself in life, with your time and work and attention, the dividends will be rich indeed.
"It is your great
fortune to be alive and living, aware and capable on this day that is filled with endless possibilities. You can squander that fortune or you can choose to expand and enlarge it even further.
"The best that life has to offer cannot be bought with money. It can only be earned with your time, your effort, your attention and
commitment.
"Accomplishment and fulfillment cannot be purchased off the shelf. They come as a result of what you're willing to give.
"Invest the
best of yourself in this day, in this moment, in the great experience of living. It's an investment that will continue to pay increasingly valuable returns."
-- Ralph Masterson
That concept is so important, and so easy to lose sight of: every day we
are investing in something. We are putting time and energy towards something. What are we investing in?
This next quote, is maybe a bit more well-known, and you've likely seen or heard it before. But we can't be reminded of this too often. If you are in recovery, let this one sink it ... maybe a deeper connection to your resolve to live
with more purpose will be enough to shake out a deeper commitment to recovery:
"I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear of falling
or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessable;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which comes to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which comes to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
-- Dawna Markova
