manufacture your misery...

"Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize on it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence." (Alcoholics Anonymous.p133)

So...I feel like I have been manufacturing my misery. Parents get old, they die. I feel like I want to be serene and peaceful about it all and thus demonstrate that I understand His omnipotence. But I am so SAD!!

How do you do it? How do you find peace? How do I cheerfully capitalize on THIS?

On the plus side - I am sober to help them and witness them through this part of their journey but I am 1000 miles AWAY!

And I worry that I am manufacturing my misery - like the Monty Python skit - "they ain't dead yet!"

I don't feel particularly graceful or dignified right now....

Thanks for a place to put this...

Today, well lived...

Today well lived...

"Each today, well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness and each tomorrow a vision of hope. Look, therefore, to this one day, for it and it alone is life."

Someone sent this in a profile comment yesterday and it inspired me the whole day. I have seen it several times over the last several days...no coincidence, I am sure.

Today, WELL lived....

I went to bed last night and asked myself if I had lived well. And I could honestly answer yes.

Several times during the day, I asked myself if I was living well. And I was.

This morning, I asked how I could live today well. What can I do to enhance the world that I live in? To contribute? To give? And I've come up with some ideas, most of them very mundane. But it feels right to ask that question of myself now.

Quietly, humbly and gratefully, I share this phrase with you. May it have the same effect on you as it did on me.

Thanks for a place to put this.

Grateful for my job, sobriety, crisp autumn days and cold autumn nights. Montreal smoked meat and good rye bread. Kids, kittens, ken...