A way to be

For people who quit an addiction it seems important to have a new direction in life; a new path. At least that has been my experience anyway. If I had returned to my old way of doing things and the only thing that changed was the fact that I was sober then my recovery would have been doomed; this had been the cause of failure for all of my previous attempts at recovery. I had assumed that my life would just change if I remained sober, but there needs to be a bit more than this.

I had known intellectually the importance of doing things differently when sober, but it wasn’t until it was further explained to me by Phra Hans at Wat Thamkrabok that this information really hit me. This monk told me that the reason for my addiction was the fact that I had no direction so my life had no meaning; it was no wonder that I had fallen into the trap of abusing alcohol. When life has no real meaning why not just turn to any opportunity for comfort that life could throw at me. It was the lack of any real alternative that meant that I stuck with this flawed tool for coping with life long after it had stopped working; why I stuck with it even though it was killing me and making my life unbearable.

I finished my treatment at Wat Thamkrabok now convinced about the importance of finding a path. I sort of misunderstood things even then. I expected any path coming my way to be a bit grand; a spiritual journey that was going to take me to these amazing realisations. I sort of expected life to become full of magical signs and occurrence; all very grandiose and self-important. I was expecting something really special. I didn’t realise that the path was to be found in the simple; I failed to understand that the important thing was to be on a path and that there was no real importance as to the final goal or speed that I would be travelling. If I am on a journey then there will be things to discover; if I dedicate myself to a direction in life then there will be meaning and rewards.

It is my conviction that the meaning of life is to find something that gives us pleasure and just dedicating ourselves to whatever this is. This could be something like Tai Chi or even stamp collecting, the important thing is that it is something that we can devote ourselves to with at least half the enthusiasm that we had for our previous addiction. Of course we should not allow it to interfere with our ability to fulfil our social and family obligations. This new activity doesn’t have to have any grand meaning either, and it doesn’t have to be complicated, so long as it is not a negative goal or something that involves hurting other people . There is a saying that all paths lead to the Buddha; I am not clever enough to know if this is true or if it is important. I do know that simply finding something we enjoy and devoting ourselves to it can teach us all that we need to know, and take us where we need to be. This path can steer us away from addiction, and leave us feeling that the pleasures we once found in drugs or booze are very shallow indeed.