The Next Right Thing – Building Dreams 10-1-10

Anderson, South Carolina

Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder has written incredible books about lives lived largely. In Mountains beyond Mountains, he describes how a physician, Paul Farmer, makes a difference in the lives of thousands of the disenfranchised in Haiti. Farmer’s model of empowered development is becoming a model around the world. My journey to Farmer’s mountains beyond mountains left me dumbfounded at the difference one life could make. In his Among School Children Kidder describes the wonders that happen when a committed teacher reaches into lives of ghetto children. Kidder wrote a book, House, which describes the emotional and engineering challenges that come from building a new house. Irwin Winkler directed a magnificently crafted film in 2001, “Life as a House”, depicting the healing process that takes places between a terminally-ill architect and his misanthropic son. This architect learned the value of time in vivid ways; ways only terminal illness can teach.

In recovery, those struggling to find their bearings in life have very short time horizons; having learned something very different about time as well. Those of us doing well in our lives have the luxury of planning next year’s vacation, committing to dinner with friends four days from now, agreeing to walk the neighbor’s dog tonight, planning an epic project overseas. In recovery, one often allocates every bit of emotional and physical resource to simply getting through the next five minutes without imploding or resorting to those chemical adjuncts that caused our lives to disintegrate in the first place. As one hears often in recovery, ‘there is no drug or drink that makes a life challenge any better.’

Those in recovery often hear the sound bite, ‘just do the next right thing.’ A series of ‘the next right thing’ might even lead to a whole hour of good decisions and success at staying clean and sober. An hour might turn into a day. Eventually days turn into weeks and months, even years for those who take life and recovery seriously. As is often said in recovery, ’Half measures availed us nothing.” One has to go all the way in working a good program of recovery. With the aid of a Higher Power, life can indeed become miraculous and filled with wonder once again.

One of the great miracles of recovery is one’s ability to have long time horizons, to commit to obligations progressively further out on a time horizon. At one time committing to something past a few minutes seemed impossible. One also learns to take on progressively greater responsibility – even to building a house for someone. Like Winkler’s fictional architect or Kidder’s real one, building houses for me is therapeutic.

In building Habitat for Humanity houses I came up with a personal life mantra, ‘Helping to build dreams for those who have forgotten how to dream.” A series of life choices and circumstances have led many to find themselves in substandard housing, even homeless. In Habitat we make it our mission to help rebuild lives by building affordable houses with volunteer labor.

In recovery one learns to sustain recovery by taking the message to others who still suffer. An effective sustainable life in recovery requires one to live a life of service. For certain, one always gets back more than one gives. So it is with building houses for those who have forgotten how to dream.

Some six months ago I learned through a mutual friend in another country of a woman in a distant state who faced a set of life decisions and circumstances that left her in a precarious state emotionally and financially, at risk for having no place to live. For me the next right thing was to drive a couple thousand miles and go build a house for her. There was nothing to think about, to ponder. It was black and white for me – this was my next right thing. I think of how other people extended a hand to me when I so desperately needed it. Living sustainably requires me to always do the next right thing. So it was that I spent a lot of very long hot days in June, July and August during the hottest summer on record gutting a seventy-three year old house and attempting to make it habitable; my salary consisting of a daily run to Burger King for buck burgers. With no central heat or air, no running water, and open to the weather, others wanted to tear it down. This old forlorn house that used to house cocaine addicts had possibilities, just like our ship-wrecked lives.

It became a personal challenge to make this little 668 square foot house into someone’s Taj Mahal. This small cockroach-guano infested splinter pile had possibilities, just as every life, no matter how beaten down has possibilities. Every one is worth saving. This house built of full dimension lumber, had the most amazing exterior siding of clear hardwoods, materials one can barely find at any price in an era of vinyl and particle board. Like our lives, we sometimes have to reach bottom before we can begin to live a new way. Hammers and wonder bars were used to remove everything from that house than didn’t need to be part of it anymore, termite damage, piles of cockroach dung, rusted pipes, frayed wires, things that don’t need to be in any house or any life. As in recovery, one removes things gently,

Over a couple months, insulation, wiring, plumbing, and structural changes were made. Holes in the outer walls were filled with rebuilt historic window sashes. All the original door casings, window casings, base boards, ad infinitum were carefully removed, re-milled and reinstalled. Joists strengthened sagging floors; new oak planks made the floor fit for a waltz. New walls, ceilings, light fixtures, cabinets, counters, plumbing, and buckets of paint were transformative for this little house. Far more important, this little house was transformative for a life that was almost torn down.

Perhaps one more homeowner will be reminded every day that the universe is a friendly place, if we choose to see it that way. Beauty is an infinitely renewable resource. The odds are 100% you will find it, if you but look for it. It might just be inside your neighbor’s front door.

Are you doing the next right thing with your life?