The Thoughts Between

a little holiday gratitude...   

       I just woke up from a nice sleep to hear the pouring down of rain outside. I put on some coffee and sat down to catch up on facebook for a little bit. After a few minutes of status updates and funny cartoons expressing some of the comedies of Christmas I began reflecting on the whirlwind that was my holiday/work weekend. I thought I would write for a little while about some of the things I had on my mind. So here it goes.

      Christmas has once again come and gone leaving behind in its wake several emotional and thought provoking experiences about life and the roads we travel. I witnessed first hand, this weekend, the joy of my own family celebrating the holiday while we experienced heart felt feelings of love in the purest sense of the word. And while I felt the warmth of my own family in Pennsylvania I also experienced the joy of  my work family under completely different circumstances. Here I watched as the faces of sadness and uncertainty were embraced by hugs and a genuine compassion for one another as these folks search to find answers to their problems with addiction. I  felt the love of fellowship as they rallied around each other with a common desire to heal the wounds of a disease that tears the love in their families apart. By the way, how would you define love? I took a philosophy class this past semester where we posed that very question. It was quite interesting to hear the different explanations coming from everyone. It's not that easy to put into words. So maybe I should be careful by dispensing the idea that I have experienced love in its purest sense. Who am I to really know what that is? I guess I'm only me, and based on my own experiences of love I have my own idea of something that would be, well, pure. But keeping that idea in mind with all of the joys during the holiday season there is also a lot of sadness and in the same way that love and happiness can be magnified during this time of year so can loneliness and depression.

     Not everyone feels warm and fuzzy about their lives. Heck I've been there my self at times but somehow the spirit of this special time of year seems to seep through and tweak our happy valves even just a little bit. You may not even realize that it's happening. I work in a treatment facility where patients are away from their families and totally confused about the situation that has developed in their lives. Its a mixed bag of emotions really because while they miss their families and feel the weight of guilt that comes with being away from their children, they also hang onto the realization that they are doing something that will yield to happier occasions in the future. But still, the current circumstances have a way of trapping the darkness of the moment into these pockets of depression and for that there is only the hope that time will heal.

    I guess I feel lucky in a way to be in a place where I can experience the opposite ends of this emotional spectrum. It really does lend itself to a lot of gratitude for not only where I've come from but for the things that I have in my life today. A couple of days before Christmas I was sitting with my parents thinking how lucky I was to have them both alive and healthy at this point in my life. We were talking about some of the less fortunate people in the world and my dad started to tear up when he thought of one of his close friends whose wife has cancer. He was feeling the pain of that man and expressing his feelings about all of the sadness in the world. It was at that point that I said to him, " look how lucky we are! We are all still alive and pretty healthy. We have weathered some rough storms and here we are getting ready to celebrate a family tradition. We have a lot to be grateful for". It's true! We do have a lot to be grateful for and yes there is a lot a sadness in the world. It's why, in my opinion, people who have the ability to share happiness should do it. I know there are many ways in which we can all give or express our gratitude. Everyone, on some level, is close to a cause of some kind and if not there are plenty of folks who could just use a little love at this time of the year. Maybe you'll even find your own definition of pure. Who knows... But its certainly worth trying.

     One more thing and then I'll stop. Often sadness and depression are clinical and need professional attention and treatment. But often it's a result of self consuming thoughts and isolation. One way to help yourself with that would be to get out and help someone else. You might just find that your situation is not quite as bad as you think. You might even have a little surge of joy and feel better about who you are. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and please be safe over the new years weekend. I'll be working again this weekend but not before I get to spend some time with my lady as we will celebrate our belated Christmas with each other and share in the joy of the day.

Peace everyone
Rob ~

Catching Up at Christmas

         Wow! It's been sometime since I last blogged. I couldn't begin to tell you all that's been going on since August. It would take too long. I would love to make a better attempt to blog a bit more regularly in the coming year but in order to do that I need to try and allow the natural course of feelings to find there way into my writing. Ya know, without too much editing and poetic analogies and such. OK, well maybe a few here there. After all writing is a creative expression of our thoughts and what better way to allow that to happen than writing something that has your true self imbedded into it's content.

         Anyway, the last few months have been busy. To begin with I started a diet back in August because I was getting tired of the way I looked and felt. I was finally able to get on a track with both eating and working out and it started to show results. Once the results were becoming more and more evident I wanted it more and more. I got involved with a weight loss program called "A Better Weigh". It was very hard to do and I'm not kidding when I tell you there were times I had to just lay down and sleep because I couldn't stand the feeling of wanting to eat and not being able to do so. But with some determination and the support of the folks on the staff I was able to come up with ways of getting through the urges. It's a very restricting diet and one that many would disagree with but I got the results I was looking for and now I have to try and make some permanent changes from 50 years of bad eating habits. Not easy!!  By the weigh ;-) I lost a total of 35 lbs.

         I continued with school this fall although I only took one class, Philosophy 101. I only took the one class because  I was very uncertain about my involvement with music and other interests. Of course there is the other time sucker which is my full time job. I'm glad I made this choice because it really allowed me some wiggle room when my schedule got heavy. The class was great as was the teacher. Professor Brown is an attorney who works out of DC and was formally a Wall Street finance guy. He has a real passion for philosophy and gave very cool and energy packed lectures on all the topics we covered. I like to say that I put one hundred percent into this class but the reality is I did what I had to do to get by. The one thing I can say is that I was truly engaged in the class time and enjoyed participating in the conversations. I was amazed at the intellectual level of some of my classmates who, might I remind you, were only 18 or 19 years old. We covered everything from the Origins of Philosophy to Existentialism to Marxism and more. It had a profound impact on my thinking and helped me to confirm that it's OK for me to feel some of the things I do and that the quest for the truth can be often painful but enlightening.

     My job at Father Martin's Ashley has been and continues to be a gift that I can only express as divine in my life. I have never once, in the time I have been working there, felt like I didn't want to go to work. And if for some reason I did feel that way, for a second, it was because I had to get up and move from point A to point B. It never had anything to do with the actual work. In fact I don't even see it as work at all. I look forward to arriving to one of the worlds truly amazing institutions every day I'm scheduled to be there. The chance to help people to get through such difficult times in their life is really, in my opinion, being engaged in God's work. And even though I work a schedule that is a little bit isolating from what we know as normal I still love the work and the chance to be there for the next suffering person at the end of their rope. It has helped me to stay focused in my own recovery and realize the gift that I was given about 3-1/2 years ago.

     OK, I'm going on too long here and I've only covered three areas of my busy schedule over the past few months. Trust me when I tell you that everything else is also going well. It hasn't come without some tough days or a bit of soul searching but the journey is good and I am looking forward to Christmas and the holiday season. I will be at work on these days this year helping the folks who are in treatment to find some peace and gratitude for being exactly where they are at this moment in time. So if you think of it, toss up a prayer for the still sick and suffering throughout the world and from me to you have a wonderful holiday experience with your family and friends.

With Love,
Rob