Building a foundation is often hard, thankless work. Often we compare our progress, however minimal, to what we believe the end-product should look like, but seldom appreciate the headway we make. Whether you're building a structure or something more abstract, it is important to stop and appreciate your handiwork. Your progress. Your growth.
“But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I have battled myself. Somehow I lost. And won. I used to drink heavily. Not the, "Hey, I'm going to the bar and have some drinks every night" kind, but the rise and shine, all day type. Routinely I would consume over a fifth of vodka per day, and still be quasi-functional. I should have been jailed, hospitalized and/or institutionalize on innumerable occasions over the past 5 years.
It certainly wasn't a lifestyle sought out. It definitely was not how I was raised. So what gives? My journey into the abyss started, I believe, when I gave up on "being a musician." To me, it was an all-or-nothing sort of thing; either I pursue music full-on, or I don't. By pursuing an education as a Med Tech meant that I was not actively perusing my music career. So, then I consciously, but deliberately sabotaged my career by alienating myself from most of my old band mates and fellow musicians. I began to drink more often, easing ever-present and increasingly uncomfortable pain of throwing away my dreams.
It's not easy to rebuild relationships. It's even more difficult to say, "I was wrong." Perhaps, "I was a complete and utter tool, and I was wrong" would be more appropriate? Still fighting my way to the surface of this anxiety and depression that have become the status-quo for so long, I strive to capitalize on every opportunity that arises to exercise humility and gratitude to those who I have wronged.
My favorite Van Morrison album is The Healing Game. I've heard it 1000 times, but today it struck me. I'm back. I'm back where I belong. Where I've always been. Back in the Healing Game.
Take a listen.
DB
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