By Dave L.
The Post-College News
October 1991
Vol. 3, No. 1
Before I had a phone of my own, I made my calls from a pay phone.
One Saturday I wanted to call Chicago. From San Diego, this is an expensive proposition, especially from a pay phone.
I was going to need some change. I went to the neighborhood grocery and asked if they could give me change for a five in quarters. The store had just opened and the tanned, crewcut man behind the counter was unsure of whether or not he should give it to me. He asked me what it was for and I said, “The pay phone.” He decided to give me the change.
Mouthing cardinal numbers to himself, he said, “When I was dealing drugs I had to call Colombia from a pay phone. Twenty-six bucks it cost me. That’s a bag full of quarters.” This struck me as an odd thing to say out of the blue. Then I realized that most Americans, even poor ones, have phones in their homes and that he must have assumed I was up to no good if I was forced to use a public phone. I wasn’t sure if he would believe me if I told him I was only calling friends in Chicago.
Then, reflectively, with a winsomeness that made me wonder if he was not just talking about any single phone call but was also alluding to time spent injecting drugs, he added, “That’s a lot of money to stick through that little hole.”
Before he handed me the quarters, he gave friendly advice. Speaking slowly, putting a spin on every phrase, he said, “It’s all one day at a time. The twelve-step program. Narcotics Anonymous. It works.”
I saw the man again from time to time over the next year, but never spoke to him again. He continued to work at the grocery store until it burned down this summer. He got progressively more muscular. He was obviously lifting weights. One Sunday when I stopped in for the Los Angeles Times he was introducing his wife and kids to the other people who worked at the store. He seemed healthy, happy, and, more importantly, still in recovery.
Out here, I’ve met a number of people in recovery, persons who have admitted they are powerless over a drug, usually alcohol, and have undertaken the twelve-step recovery program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous. This is a spiritual program involving prayer, fellowship, self-examination, spiritual growth, and the attempt to heal wounds inflicted by members on the persons around them when the substance abuse was at the core of their lives. Together, members try—and very often succeed—to keep alcohol and other drugs out of their lives one day at a time.
As I try to discover what it means to bear the cross in this life, I really get nowhere until I remember the lesson of the bodybuilder from Narcotics Anonymous.
Our lives are a sum total of days. We put meaning into them by picking up the tasks we’re called to do and setting off to do them one step at a time. This is so obvious it would seem ridiculous to say if it weren’t for the fact that I spend part of each day wishing it weren’t true.
Ever since I’ve been back in school I wish it were over. My favorite fantasy has nothing to do with sex. Daily, I imagine that the whole business has passed like a movie dissolve and that I am seated in an office with the diploma on the wall. Exam stress is a quaint memory and student grade competition seems as remote as a nursery school push-fight. The fantasy is to have it over and have it over now. The fact that I would lose a few years of my life if the fantasy were to become real makes no difference. The prospect of not having to plod through the struggle, enduring one stressful day after another, is more thrilling than pornography.
But no such thing is possible. Everything must be done in order. Every hoop must be jumped through. Every moment must be experienced. Time, even when it sseems to move fast, offers no package deals.
When I started school it was incredibly discouraging to think in the long term. “You mean I have to work like this every day for the next three years?” summed up my fears.
Happily, I was not being asked to take responsibility for the next three years in one night. I wasn’t able to prepare for the next three years. I couldn’t have done it. But I was able to prepare for the next day.
I have a friend who describes sobriety as “swimming to the buoys.” It goes back to a childhood incident. One day, while growing up in Honolulu, he was being chased by the police. The only escape was to swim off the beach to a remote island. The island was a long way off and he didn’t think he could make it if he tried to do it in one long swim. He hit on the idea that he could probably make it if he swam from harbor buoy to harbor buoy and took a rest at each one. He did this and lived to tell about it.
He now says that he can only stay sober if he concentrates on the now and keeps alcohol out of his life from meeting to meeting, swimming sober to his long-term goals by going from meeting to meeting as he once went from buoy to buoy.
This lesson is for everyone. It rings the most true for people in recovery, but we all need to learn how to stick ti out for the long haul by living for short-term goals.
The mission of our lives in this world, the doing of whatever it is we are meant to do, can only be done one step at a time. It would be marvelous to find ourselves immediately walking the streets of heaven without having to go through the drudgery and hurts of the meantime, but that option is not available.
We must swim to the buoys with grace and dignity and leave the long-haul concerns to a power beyond us.
