The Whole Wide World

A year or so after I got sober, I heard the line ‘people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.’ I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit lately. About the people I’ve met down here and my relationships with each of them. Wondering who belongs in each of those buckets. Sometimes it’s easy to see who fits where, and sometimes it takes the gift of hindsight to come to understand. Curious of its origins, I looked the saying up tonight and was surprised to find it’s actually a poem by Brian A. “Drew” Chalker. I think it is pretty accurate, the reason, the season and the lifetime. If anything, it helps with reflection and understanding, or sometimes not understanding and letting go.

Sobriety has given me many gifts and it has made me a better human. It’s not that I wasn’t a good human before I got sober, but there is no doubt I am a better one now. I am also not saying I am perfect. Far from it. I still have plenty of room to do better, every single day. But, when I got sober, I got better at life’ing, better at walking through my emotions, better at being better towards other humans. Gifts.

I believe that we are all just doing the best that we can with what we have; be it our physical, spiritual, or emotional capacity. Sometimes it is a practice to really believe that-that we are all doing our best. Most often it is the hardest when someone has hurt me and I want to be angry at them for being a shitty human. That’s when I have to remember it the most and give them grace. Then I somehow end up feeling sorry for them instead of angry and hurt. It helps me to flip the script. To get out of self-pity. It’s not about me.

We are all just doing the best we can with what we have in this moment.

I am grateful for all of my people. The ones who came for a reason, a season, and a lifetime.