A Luminous Future and an Endless Summer
Living in Florida & Looking Ahead
About half of the things I begin languish in my Substack DRAFTS folder…
Most of the pieces I begin on Substack are deleted after a few paragraphs… or 1/3rd or 4/5ths finished, but not posted. Writing for me is half-discipline and half-impulse and if my interest in a subject flags or wanders I generally retreat from that subject, until it rises into my range of focus and becomes salient for me again.
Below is something that I started a few months ago:
I came to Florida as part of a last-ditch effort. My parents, grieved and frustrated about my intermittent (but worsening) cycles of compulsion and dysfunction around drug use, were willing to pay many tens of thousands of dollars for a long-term inpatient drug treatment facility near Delray Beach.
I had already learned about the kinds of personal growth afforded by reading, and moving, and fighting, and competing, and struggling. During this period of my life I learned the values of therapy and honesty and self-reflection in a way which was new to me. I am rather pessimistic about the current strategies and direction of psychology as a field, but I maintain that therapy can be useful, if participated in by the right people for the right reasons in the right ways.
I was I could say that I learned how to be sober during my in-patient stay and continued my active abstinence thereafter but that would not be accurate. I wanted to want to get sober, and eventually I even wanted to get sober… but desires and intentions are of little importance by themselves. Actions matter, and sobriety is only available for those with the humility or desperation to follow suggestions from others in a fulsome manner, with complete surrender.
When I finally accepted that I was able to outpace my destructive urges. My life has improved tremendously but the improvement is less about credit scores or status or legal freedom than it is about a general sense of peace and contentment which long eluded me.
Along with the suggestions of my sponsor and participation in meetings and honesty and altruistic action I have begun to explore new routes of self-discovery and self-improvement:
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Writing
Active Imagination and Dream Journaling…
I don’t know where I was going with this when I sat down and typed it out in a hurry several months ago, but it was in earnest and is all accurate. After writing all of that it no longer seemed trenchant, or interesting, so unposted it remained. Since I’ve gotten sober I’ve tended to write a lot about my life-its direction and my past and lessons and beliefs. Some of that is an effort to process things which have bothered or confused me; some is an effort to tell others things I have learned or have come to believe which seem important.
There’s an additional factor, though. It’s one that I have mostly avoided writing about because of its mystical overtones. I know very well that many things which can be known and felt are essentially outside the range of what can usefully be vocalized. There are great truths which must be learned on one’s own, or which are impossible to put into words. Some of them seem unbelievably trite when they’re forced into the small and cramped box of human language. In these cases the words indicate something vast and deeply mysterious… but the corresponding sentences (“everything is love”) sound tautological or even vapid. Our brains are tiny and imperfect lenses through which we view reality. They are the only lenses we’ve got and so we must make do but we should never presume that the things we’re apprehending ultimately have the qualities of completeness or integrity.
When I was a boy I lived (mostly) on a series of army bases, in a blissful simulacrum of the 1950’s suburb, with a slightly drab and utilitarian quality and a surplus helping of patriotism (flags, ‘taps’ playing each day, fireworks displays on July 4th, etc.). We always lived in decent houses, in developments full of families who were mostly happy and functional (everyone’s head of household was employed, after all, and everyone had good schools and medical coverage… and traditional and pro-American beliefs were the common assumption behind every event and institution). It saddens me that many children do not have these elements of reassuring stability and wholesomeness in their lives and the adults who try to erode these qualities to build their own vision of a progressive future are uniquely contemptible to me.
On summer nights we would run about. I scarcely remember what we did during these warm and sociable evenings but whatever it was it kept us busy, and in the company of a group (a few to a dozen) of other kids, for hours. The grass was green and odoriferous and the air was balmy and our dashes and shouts were interspersed with sprinklers and myriad fireflies. The adults would sit together, sipping drinks and chatting and laughing, only acknowledging us when we would run up with pleas or questions.
Even during those evenings, age 5-11, I felt and understood they were magical and heavy with the sweet and grievous mystery of time. The present is all we ever have but most of those moments pass in a flurry of distraction (tasks, resentments, plans, memories, regrets). It is a rare and profound thing to know that this present moment is both fleeting and eternal. It is the thread that binds us to existence and even children can comprehend this, though they don’t have words to express their knowledge.
I recount these long-ago evenings because they have visited me again this year, as I drive or read or sit. They are the additional factor that I referred to earlier. I feel bound to the past anew. I feel intuitions (half sentiment, half certainty) that I will expereince evenings like this myself, again, but from the perspective of an adult, sitting in his community and watching the neighborhood children… perhaps his own. I don’t know if you’ve had these kinds of sensations: it’s like deja vu, but in reverse. You feel a subtle sense that something will happen and you get a profound premonition of the feelings provoked by it happening. Perhaps these are just feelings, or subconscious urges or dream remnants floating to the surface during waking life.
Then again, perhaps not. Since becoming sober this time around I have felt a keen and daily sense of power. Freed from the burden of compulsion and shame I feel capable and likeable and happy. I greet most mornings with gratitude and excitement. I’ve begun looking around for a better place to live. I recently (by which I mean yesterday morning) discovered that my current job is downsizing but I see a lot of opportunity and employer interest in the market and I approach this bout of unemployment with an unprecedented feeling of confidence. Similarly, I have met an interesting and attractive person and generally feel attractive myself. With a life in good order I can proceed in meeting people and exploring opportunities with a sense of discretion and openness-not just grabbing onto whichever raft I manage to cling to.
Summer in Florida is a wonderful time as well. Florida is a kind of subtropical amusement park of American values: automobile culture, capitalism, tourism, landscaping, shopping-all exist in a hypercharged state here. The mornings are already hot and muggy, moisture beading up on the windows and dripping from the trees. The twilight respite from the afternoon sun feels lazy and indulgent… as if the darkening evening will last for 12 hours and all of that time can be given to strolling or relaxing. The beaches are wonderful and the campgrounds are full and the golf courses are probably bustling (but I never visit them). Due to a less restrictive program of economic and social control than many other states (despite what you may read in the news), and the attendant prosperity, our population grows daily. Around 1,000 people join the net population of Florida every day, on average, and those crowds fill our restaurants and stores and add money and jobs to our economy. Some residents complain about the traffic but that’s like complaining about high taxes when rich-it’s a better problem to have than the alternative!
The summer will end, of course. My life continues to improve though, and my soul continues to heal. I’ve re-established contact with many dear old friends and will reach out to the last of them soon. My optimism is part life-strategy and part hope… but it is also rooted in my circumstances and the trendlines of change for my finances and my reputation.
I am excited to see what comes next.
