One day at a time, with his grace, until there are no more.
One day at a time I get. It's the sober person's mantra. It describes our way of life. It is an extremely practical way to resist the temptation of substance abuse while shifting the time perspective from forever to today. It is utterly stoic.
With his grace is another 12-step-ish sentiment. Step 2 states, "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity," while step 3 says, "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." So dependence on a higher power that many refer to as god is central to this particular sober way of living.
Until there are no more he added himself, as far as I could tell, and it hit like a gut punch. We are all going to die. We are all fragile beings present in consciousness for a minuscule amount of time, cosmically speaking.
There is a lot more involved with sobriety than just not drinking. We alcoholics are expert cultivators of resentment, anger, and self-pity. I realized after returning from the hospital that I never once felt self-pity during my ordeal. Self-pity used to be a default state of being for me. Not thinking all the time about myself and how undeserved my occasionally miserable circumstances are really frees me up to think about other things. That's nice.
Anyway, that one phrase jumped out at me during an AA talk yesterday.
I'm secretly hoping the system gives me a whiskey emoji for this post.
These days I am in belief that anyone who is annoyed (self pity included) have forgotten the truth that they -- and everybody they love -- will one day die.
I like to think of it even more than one day at a time. One moment at a time.