Sunday morning. It's sunny and I've nothing to do. It's great. So far I've inadvertently listened to two different songs titled Sunday Morning and I'm hoping for a third. Since last weekend I've made it a point to take it easy; rein in the drinking, adhere to a strict exercise regimen, eat right, sleep. The results are palpable. Functioning in the world seems easier, miraculously more manageable. Hangovers color the world something awful. Everything becomes a burden, the simplest of tasks a chore. Drinking is insidious and subversively masochistic. It is to self-inflict a handicap, to try and laugh with a bruised rib.
Why do we drink? We seem to be uncomfortable with the notion of ease, always desiring it but never satisfied with its attainment. How we love something to complain about, to struggle with, or against. As soon as we achieve a true sense of leisure, either on a vacation or after securing a pocket of personal time, we grow bored and restless, guilt and fear fuel the voice in our heads that tells us we are unproductive. We can't relax. It is only when we are confronted with deep exhaustion that we can rest, and even then it is not by choice. Overworked and overtaxed, financially, spiritually, emotionally, we seek meager reprieves through distraction, indulgence, petty attempts at vying for control, so that however briefly, we might escape, or even command the dizzying chaos that rules us. Few are willing to admit that true control comes from submission, that to really usurp that which enslaves you, you must surrender.
This is paradoxical, however, because there is an assumed loss of agency, and how can one really be free if they are entirely without dominion? It is because they have agreed to the terms - they are complicit in their subjugation. To embrace a thing diminishes its power over you; sovereignty through surrender. But how is this true for something like alcoholism? To submit to addiction does not give one strength, in fact, it grants unrestrained power to the force. To be at its mercy is undesirable. What, then?
Are we to resist, to yell and scream and not go gently into that good night? Are we then only enslaved to our own stubborn will? The puerile hubris of our privileged position on this planet? One which tells us we can overcome, that we are an exceptional exception, that the will of the world is ours to bend and shape?
Some have said "freedom is the feeling one gets when they are not aware of what truly controls them." Then perhaps it is ignorance that bestows the most total freedom, the blissful abandon of a child. Maybe to be unattached to an outcome is the highest level of achievement. There is wisdom in only taking what you need, when you need it. The child analogy falls apart in that children require care, their existence necessitates stress and struggle on behalf of the parent - the parent bears the burden of all the worry the child should carry, in addition to their own. Maybe it is this mechanism which causes the transference of anxiety; a filial inheritance of fear, a frightened nature we can't help but nurture.
In a sense it is concern with the future that causes worry. A preoccupation with the past can cause this too - when one ruminates on failures and lost opportunities - but more often than not it is a looking out into the field, surveying the horizon for telltale signs of disaster that fills us with the most dread. One must have a keen foresight to plan for (and prevent) catastrophe often and early. Parents are good at this. The recognition of any and all potential pitfalls is an essential ingredient for protection. They would tell you one must anticipate tragedy to avert it. But what of the tragedies that do not come? What about the psychological havoc wrought by living in such a state of fear?
Fear is always all around us, I find, and in ever increasing proportions as we age. We can feel it as we struggle toward a palsied and terrified version of our old selves; hairs dead and gone or white with worry, waves of wrinkles washed over loose, sagging skin, hands that won't stop shaking, cramped and aching muscles stretched over crooked skeletons twisted and hobbled by time.
That got dark. I guess I needed to balance out the sun a little bit. Just a smidgen.
Smidgen.
Rhymes with pigeon.
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