The heart’s desire

 

As I was making coffee in the kkitchen this morning, I noticed a small pretty  calico cat watching me from under a cotoneaster bush. I know the  little cat, his name is Captain Jim and he lives next door. Some mornings he sits on the wall where the golden Pyrostegia venusta is climbing up through ornamental ginger, sometimes he rolls about in the gravel  in front of the strelitzia. And sometimes he just sits under that dark green cotoneaster with its scarlet berries for the birds.  Paws folded and a curious detached interest, wanting nothing from me, just watcfhing me do what i do every morning. Something about that detached friendly curiosity made me feel relaxed and  unalone, enjoying the contact. Detachment is a great gift to relationships.

 

It is the full moon in Aquarius, combining with another lunar eclipse. Moonlight poured into my bedroom like a luminous waterfall last night, a brightness that kept waking me. I was having dreams about helping  recovering alcoholics to cross a rope bridge over  some deep ravine. All they needed to do was walk slowly and steadily without stopping until they reached the other side, but some were too frightened to come near the rope bridge at all. One young woman kept making little jerky dashes onto the rope briidge and then  turning back while calling out for help. My heart was aching with sadness and I kept wishing there was more I could do.

 

When I woke up I read a few sentences from page 153 of the Big Book:  Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life. You will learn the full meaning of ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’.

 

I really do believe it is possible for anyone trapped in the suffering of alcoholism, that misery and  muddle, to get sober and stay sober, to live a  joyful and productive life, to discover freedom and a truly compassionate selfless love for others. Every once in a while I realise how much I have changed and how hope transforms every aspect of my life. I see that same shining hope in others as their sober lives fill up with meaning and love and sanity. But I also know that anyone who is still drinking has to find the desire within to stop drinking. Without that hunger for another kind of life, nothing is possible.

When I was newly sober and attending meetings in the city each Tuesday evening, a woman in her late 40s came up to me  after a meeting and said crossly, ‘Give me one  good reason why I should stop drinking. Everyone tells me I should stop, but I really don’t want to  give it up.’ I looked at her and saw the years  of unchanging obliviousness stretching out ahead of her as once they had done for  me. The heart cannot lie: if we do not want to save our own lives, no rescuers with fire trucks or Big Books or bloodhounds or men in white coats or fellow alcoholics with dire stories will make the least difference. Where there is no vision, the people perish. The rope bridge might as well be invisible, the help offered is worthless, nothing happens, nothing changes.