"Lighten Up"

"We learn to lighten up," says today's Just For Today. Indeed. Some of the best times I've had in this life have been when I was standing around with some other addicts after a meeting, laughing with our sick senses of humor at a world that is so insane there aren't words to describe it. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there to whom the world makes sense, to whom other people's behavior isn't a confounding mystery. I am not one of them. I'm lucky to have people in my life who I can share a good laugh with, because from where I look at the world, you gotta either laugh or cry. And I've done enough of the latter.

There is a freedom and a joy that comes from working the program of Recovery. I love the part in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous where it talks about how "we are not a glum lot". It's so true. And it's a depth of joy and mirth that I'm not sure normies can really understand. They've never been prisoners of the disease, so how can they know the joy of being free? 'How does it happen?' they might ask. 'Where does all this mirth come from?' 'With the horrors your lives have been, how can you crazy addicts & alcoholics possibly ever sit around just laughing??'

We just do. It's actually pretty simple. We don't have to lie all the time anymore. We are filled with hope and faith, whereas we were once lost and without direction. We know the past no longer holds sway over us, that how we live our lives today is what truly matters. Fear no longer paralyzes us, drives us, or dictates our actions. We have been through our own worst tragedy--the hell of our lives--and lived to tell the tale. Our lives today are miracles. We go about them with gratitude, knowing how fortunate we are, and seeing the humor in a world that allows such amazing changes in fortune.

At the height of active addiction, we are in constant crisis mode. Every little thing that happens is the end of the world. As we gain clean time, life balances out and we come down from the adrenaline rush of that constant, heightened state. We see the crisis-mode in others, too, regardless of whether or not they're addicts. We can't help but laugh because we know it so well. We know how exhausting it is, how unmanageable. We laugh because we know there is another way, and how much happier we are following it. We're laughing because we're remembering how we used to be like that, and how insane we were. By learning to not spend all our energy responding to life as if it were a constant crisis, we gain the ability to experience the full range of our humanity.

Occasionally, I'll find myself in a meeting that feels like a funeral. When I do, I don't go back to it. That is not Recovery. Morose despair is the past. Joy and laughter are the present, and--if we keep working the program--the future too.