Anderson, South Carolina
One of the greatest forms of entertainment for me is going to a nexus of humanity like Victoria Station or Schipol Airport and gazing at departures boards listing hundreds of destinations throughout the world. In Victoria, I fantasize as to what the world looks like at the far end of serpentine tracks. From this venerable old glass and iron station one can take trains most anywhere. It’s possible to take the Orient Express to the East or connect to the Trans-Siberian railroad; traversing thirteen time zones and ending up on the far side of Mongolia. This chaotic frantic nexus of life is one of my favorite places in the world. Recently, I’ve gone to this station and ended up in the gilded wonders of places like St Petersburg, gawking at onion-domed splendors of Russian Orthodoxy. A few weeks ago my last journey out of Victoria led me to another fine Victorian station and a sea voyage to the glaciers of Norway.
Airports tend to be of another magnitude all together. Just west of where I live is the busiest airport in the world. Departure boards in the international terminal show destinations to six continents. It’s a heady experience thinking one in two days can be anywhere on earth, depending on which door one passes through. While waiting for boarding I wander the terminals, watching names of exotic cities cross over red LED boards above ticketing counters. I fantasize how different my life might be if I inadvertently went through an unintended door.
Alan Lightman, a physicist at MIT, in his compelling Einstein’s Dreams describes the nearly infinite possibilities for parallel universes with utterly different realities. I read this fanciful book while taking a train between two distant cities, wondering about different decision points in time effecting long-term consequences in my life. The smallest changes in the physics of time and space are capable of radically altering our entire life experience. The smallest life decisions we make can be as enormous in their effects.
This week a French woman boarded a Paris-bound jet in Lahore, Pakistan. She correctly determined it was going to Paris, which it accomplished on time without incident. Alas, she was asleep at the switch, snoring through the jet’s scheduled two-hour layover/turnaround. When she awoke she was unaware she was actually retracing the same 3,830 mile journey back to Lahore. She only realized her error when immigration officials in Pakistan challenged her. She was not attentive to her final destination. It wasn’t enough to set off with the right destination in mind; she needed to do those things required to achieve it. In the case of air travel, it’s simple. Just get on the right plane, pay attention, stay awake, and get off at the right stop! For her the consequences are not so vast, a wasted day and perhaps the cost of a round-trip ticket.
For those attempting to find a new life in sobriety, setting sights on goals and destinations can be quite the challenge, inattention can be catastrophic, even fatal. A lifetime may have been given to keeping company with individuals having no flight plans. Life was nothing more than a journey through the abject darkness of addiction and alcoholism, seasoned with an astounding measure of despair and emotional pain. Many of these travelers end up in places far worse than Lahore without a passport. Jails, institutions and mortuaries are far too common final destinations for them. This week at last three individuals known to me were locked up in jails and several more need to be. At least one of these will end up doing multi-year hard time in prison, a harsh final stop for a pretty twenty-two year old girl. A number of others desperately need the safety of institutional care.
I’m constantly telling new arrivals in the recovery community to make sure they build networks with members who’ve gained visions for their lives and are actively doing those things most likely to insure safe arrival at a desirable destination. In the recovery vernacular we are quick to say, “I can get you drunk a whole lot faster than you can get me sober.” We tend to do those things people around us are doing. Listlessness, apathy, drinking, drugging, spending, gambling, lying, cheating, stealing; are highly infectious with enough exposure to them. For those with emotional fragility, vulnerability, and few resources, those we travel with is mission critical. Last week one of our young arrivals was offered a journey to a nearby city with a fellow who bought her heroin. She ended up in a dark place not listed on any departures board in the world.
I will soon make a great journey of more than 20,000 miles to a place new to me. I will check LED displays to insure I go through the right doors, stay awake at layovers, switch to the right planes, and get off at the right places. If several pilots and a few hundred other ground and cabin crew do their jobs correctly and I trust them with my life, I should find myself in one of the most beautiful and livable cities in the world.
One of the great joys of working with those emerging from addictions is the camaraderie and sense of community deriving from shared victories. Even the sobering often tragic consequences of those who failed to file flight plans remind us of our mutual need for accountability in community. As I prepare and anticipate a grand new adventure, I’m astounded at the generosity of well-wishing and celebration offered me by those in community. Devoid of envy or jealousy, their celebration for my good fortune is almost transcendent. My well-wishers only ask that I share the images, words, and lessons to come from such a journey. I feel like I’m taking many friends with me.
I think about one of the foundational imperatives in recovery which suggests we seek to live lives of attraction rather than promotion. Am I living my life in such a way as to give others cause to consider the merits of a Divine plan for living? Is there enough fruitfulness, meaning, and useful in my life as to provoke inquiry from others about how they might live differently and get better results? Am I encouraging other to re-file a new Plan? Even grander than all the wonders I see on my own journeys are the milestones accomplished in new sobriety by those who have given themselves to the guidance of the One who knows the way home.
“I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, plans that will give you hope and a future.”
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
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