There are times when getting from here to there is no easy matter; when the route is unclear and obstacles seem insurmountable.
There’s an old saying: “The only difference between a stepping stone and a stumbling block is how we use them.” Will you walk in between the stones with a mind to missing them, or walk on top of the stones with a mind to using them?
I’ve learned sometimes the best stepping stones are the experiences of others. When I’ve tried to traverse life’s difficult passages inventing my own stepping stones the results were often unhappy.
I vividly recall one guy whose defiance played out with disastrous results.
It was a young man who had been ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous as part of a deferred prosecution agreement for his multiple DUIs and assault charges.
I met up with him when he arrived at a first step meeting I was chairing.
Well, from the get-go he was one angry man full of bitterness for the hand he’d been dealt. He believed he’d gotten a raw deal and the court had no right to tell him what to do.
His eyes burned with resentment when I called on him to speak. He stood up and lectured us on how we were a bunch of weak-minded fools.
He shook his fist at us and stormed out of the room, hollering we had no right to do whatever it was we were doing to him. What the court had provided as a stepping stone, he chose to see as a stumbling block.
I never thought more of it until, months later, I read an article about a guy who had been thrown from his motorcycle after a high speed chase. When I read his name I immediately recognized it as the guy who stormed out of our meeting.
I decided to gather up our first step group and head over to Harborview Hospital for a meeting.
When eight of us showed up we were met by a guy in a wheelchair breathing through a ventilator.
His crash had rendered him a quadriplegic.
Thoughts of the scene of our last encounter flooded my mind:
- His anger
- His arrogance
- His resentment
- His bile
What had been suggested he do voluntarily, through an act of humble submission, life had forced upon him as a consequence of his sheer defiance. Now it was plain to see his condition was helpless.
We all looked on our friend knowing “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”
The meeting was one for the ages, an epic discussion on the topics of powerlessness and letting go. The bitter clarity with which we were left had us frozen in our chairs.
Nothing was spoken on the ride home.
We saw so vividly
- how easy it is to sacrifice your life on the altar of freedom,
- how quickly a shaking fist can turn into a cry for help,
- how the rules of life that govern us all, apply to us all — equally.
I wondered how different it would have been had he stayed in the meeting several months earlier and listened to how others had climbed off the altar of ego and learned the art of humble acceptance.
My heart ached for this poor young man as his life was now chained to a destiny with so few options.
But my greater realization was that it all too easily could have been me. It might have been me who landed in a wheelchair on the evening of September 25, 1979 when I threw caution to the wind outside the Irish bar in Washington DC and engaged in a fight that nearly killed me.
My life and mobility had been spared.
I learned in my flirtation with freedom, “Bidden or not bidden, God is present.”
You can’t long get away with shaking your fist at life. Life will have its way with us.
Over the ensuing years when I think of my young friend I’m reminded that life is a series of natural, spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them. It only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things naturally flow forward.
Just a thought…
Pat
Copyright © 2023 Patrick J. Moriarty. All Rights Reserved.