The Secret of Love, Tolerance and Air Conditioning

_{Warning: Self-indulgent and preachy article}
Being a writer who has come to “specialize” in alcoholism is not bad. It is not as limiting as one might think. Actually, all genres are open.

Even the fiction that eructs from somewhere within has a thick thread of the malady called alcoholism running through it. Not only do I get to examining the illness; the brain, the body and the spiritual aspects but I also get to entertain with psychology, law, courts, medicine, family, career, even politics. Alcoholism touches so many of us and so much of our society I could write a book about cops and robbers and then low and behold – there is alcoholism. I can write an article about Barak Obama and . . . BINGO - he says his Dad was an alkie – - I’m in!

I can write about George Bush – Catholic priests, High School Students, Soccer Moms, Little League Coaches, Oprah’s Book Club, and Bada Bing!. . . alcoholism is all there. Libertarians, Conceptual Continuity, Cognitive Dissonance, Rock and Roll, good and evil, Heaven and Hell, Ozzy and Sharon, Inagodadevida Baby - it’s all got alcoholism running through it like it’s own blood! I will never be short ideas. I will always be able to write topically about alcoholism.

One of my favorite ‘off-topic’ topics about which I write and speak of is ‘love’. The only thing better than ‘love’ is ‘hate’ – and with good reason as I shall later explain. Writers, poets, teachers, gurus, preachers and lovers of all ilk and persuasions have been trying to define love for centuries and they have come up with all kinds of descriptions. As with most things however, I find simplicity to best and it is a very poplar notion to agree with that – at least verbally . . . in actual practice? Eh….not so much.

Some people’s idea of simplicity seems very complicated. I know some Simple Simon’s who think that avoiding Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is”Keeping It Simple”. Can you believe that?

The kind of simplicity I like is the kind that is so elemental that even it’s simplicity is simple – the kind of un-embellished truth that is so plain and unobtrusive that it is overlooked most of time and the only time we see it is when intellect reminds, say through reading an article like this one. In practice, while yet in the thick of it, it cruelly evades conscious discovery – until it is too late and has either come and gone or remains sitting heavily on our chest pinning us to the floor while we struggle without the strength to shake it off of us.

In AA we have a code. Our code is “Love and tolerance” and this is introduced to us by the co-authors of the Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous” in their prescription for recovery – a new design for living for us – during Step Ten. We are either followers of the code or not.

Step Ten is when we deal with the daily slaps in the face we get – the waves of stresses – the pebbles under the soles of our feet as we traverse this planet. These are our very own twinges of angers, dishonesties, fears and selfishness. These crop up all the time and we are continuously on the lookout for them for when they do we have a four point “system” to protect and free ourselves of them. I won’t go into those now. If you are in AA you should already know and practice them.

As alcoholics – or as any spiritually sick segment of humanity – we seem to have more than our fair share of hatred and we love little if at all. That is not exaggeration and I know it may even be a little offensive. But many of us define “love” as something “we feel” – something that “pleases us”. That we know. We spend our entire lives pleasuring ourselves.Go forbid if we should experience any discomfort at all – then all hell breaks loose. Do you know how to tell an alcoholic in a restaurant? Simple. He’s the one demanding to see the owner.

Love is simply the absence of hate. Living without anger, resentment and negative emotions is being a loving person and that frees us to show love. Self-centered people only think as love as something “they feel” – that they sit and wait for – that get done to them – but it really is something to do – to show – to proactively spread and can be as small an act as as being helpful to someone without resentment even though we would rather be doing something else or it can be as large as devoting a portion of ones life to care for a terminally ill person. These are showings of love when they are without expectations of recompense – either emotional, mental, physical, direct or indirect.

I like to think of air conditioning. When I was a kid growing up in D’ Bronx during the summers were hot and humid. I did not like them. My mother had a room air conditioner for sleeping at night while we kids just sweat through those dog-nights. Stores had huge Fedders units that blew hot smelly air that reminded me of stale pretzel rods and dripped water onto our heads as we passed under them because they were mounted right over the entrance to the store. We had to run quickly under it and into the store or else receive that warm blast or smelly exhaust and maybe even get dripped on. The most considerate store owners ran a garden hose along the door jamb and up to catch that extra condensation – just like a little roof gutter system for a house.

When you are a kid you assume that that big noisy grey smelly machine is what has magically through the miracle of science- turned the air inside from warm to cool. It had not done that at all. It is not true. What it has done is that it has sucked out all of the heat from the air and then returned it into the room — but sans the hot air. That’s what that uncomfortable blast in the face was in the doorway – it was heat formerly in the room! It turns out that air conditioners do not pump in cold air – they remove the hot air and the default is devoid of heat – COLD! Damn!

What is light but the absence of dark? What is goodness? Isn’t it the absence of evil? Dry means nothing more than ‘not wet’. Even male is very simply the absence of female – perhaps not in biological terms but in spirit and purpose.

Properly translated “Love thy neighbor” instead conveys “Do not hate your neighbor”. By not hating, not resenting, not getting sore, no feeling threatened or hurt – we bring love through our personal portals to earth. Our spot here where we live is either a piece of heaven or it is a living hell depending on how we react to all the cruelties that people toss in our direction. We won’t always be able to duck them. We don’t grow through them if we do. It is how we react when they land on us and that’s all there is to being happy joyous and free or else restless, irritable and discontent.The choice is ours.

“Love and Tolerance is our code” and Step Ten is where it’s at in order to keep alive not only sobriety, but love and tolerance themselves. No wonder the co-authors were sure that unless we practice Step Ten daily that we would be headed for trouble. They called it resting on laurels.

Peace,

Danny S