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The Beauty of Hitting Bottom

Posted by Steve Roberts on
 March 21, 2021
  ·  3 Comments

As a recovering alcoholic of 32 years, I’m always delighted to run across a fresh insight about addiction, such as the following from David Milch, fabulous writer of one of my favorite westerns, the HBO series “Deadwood,” set in raw, lawless South Dakota circa 1870, where you can hear the word “cocksucker” more times than you ever thought possible while marveling at the Shakespearean beauty of the exposition it embellishes and the characters who speak it.  Anyway, Mr. Milch’s ability to turn a phrase relating to addiction is equally memorable, if short on profanity:

Evidence that you’re close to hitting bottom:

Your circumstances are deteriorating faster

than you can lower your standards.

Read More

*Favorites Addiction Essays Health
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A Primal Force of Dignity

Posted by Steve Roberts on
 July 14, 2019
  ·  No Comments
Soccer player's foot pointed to a star

I’ve wept more than once with feelings I find hard to name as I take in the USA women’s World Cup championship. 

I search my memory.  Have I ever witnessed anything akin to it in spirit: women as a unit representing a primal force of dignity?  

The closest I can come occurred in 1963.  I was 19.

I watched Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech live on TV with a dozen or so African American cleaning ladies in the day room of a bachelor officer’s quarters on Fort Bragg, North Carolina, mine the only white face in the group.  

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*Favorites Leadership
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A Dozen Things No Election Will Change

Posted by Steve Roberts on
 November 11, 2018
  ·  4 Comments

  1. If our candidate needed to win in order for us to be happy, we signed up for the ultimate in misery––attaching our happiness to something we cannot control.
  2. If our candidate did win and we think that’s the reason we’re happy, we’re mistaken.  Same if we think our crankiness is due to our person’s loss.  Don’t be concerned.  It takes most of us lifetimes to realize how impossible either scenario is. 
  3. The most important thing to know about Trump is that he is not responsible for our feelings about him––whatever those feelings are.  
  4. The same can be said about everyone else we’ve ever known.
  5. How we define our world creates our world.  This principle is the root of our every judgment, our every opinion, our every resentment, our every joy.  
  6. The human family’s addiction to drugs is nowhere near as harmful as our addiction to beliefs.  And maybe our most malicious belief is that people and events cause how we feel, and thus how we respond.  
  7. Saying “This makes me angry,” is another thing we do a million times until we realize that it’s impossible, and that we’re just trying to avoid taking responsibility for our fear and pain.  
  8. Many things are harmful and call to be changed.  But only we make them a burden.  
  9. And when we do, we deny ourselves the gift inherent in every experience: the opportunity to grow our ability to respond with kindness and wisdom to whatever comes our way.
  10. With enthusiasm, even ferocity, we can fight for or against whatever our heart impels us to address without resentment, condescension, or hatred.  Dr. King said one Christmas, “If we don’t have goodwill toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves.” 
  11. In fact, we needn’t fight “against” anything, but instead align our heart and mind with honoring and creating that which we hold sacred.
  12. To cultivate lasting happiness, even in the face of perpetual heartbreak, a useful mantra is the question: What am I trying to accomplish that I can control?  Discovering and acting on our answers is pretty much all there is to a healthy life: one that doesn’t attach itself to the outcome of an election or any other endeavor, but rather focuses solely on the energy and integrity we invest in a noble aspiration, one that serves the entire human family.  Having a peaceful heart, for instance.
**Archive *Favorites Addiction Essays Trump
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Loving Mud: A Valentine From the Archives

Posted by Steve Roberts on
 February 11, 2018
  ·  4 Comments

Color photo of stone sculpture silhouetted against a fiery sunset sky: stones balanced creating an iconic native woman wrapped in a blanket.

For those who understand that exploring remote and dangerous places is always an inner as well as an outer journey, Pemako, a region bordering Tibet and India that includes river gorges three times the depth of the Grand Canyon, has been called, for centuries, the supreme of all hidden-lands. Read More

*Favorites Attitude
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Barking to the Choir

Posted by Steve Roberts on
 December 24, 2017
  ·  2 Comments

 

I’d jump at the chance to take a slow boat to China with Greg Boyle.  He has an inspired sense of the ultimate nature of things, and a laugh from downtown.  Talk about playful, loving and deep.

Boyle is a Jesuit priest who has buried more than 200 young human beings he knows and loves, all killed because of gang violence.  Killed by people he also knows and loves.  Some 30 years ago, he founded Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, today the largest gang intervention, rehab and re-entry program on the planet.  His second book was published recently.  It’s titled “Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship.”  The choir, to Boyle, is everyone who longs and aches to widen their “loving look” at what’s right in front of them.  I’m glad I don’t have to pony up a fin every time I’ve underlined something I never want to forget. Read More

*Favorites Attitude
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My Other Website

One Mans Dance logo with the M as legs with shoes

"The push to change the words “nigger” and “injun” in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, because the so-called offensive nature of those terms might limit today’s readership and appreciation of that literary classic, is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how we avoid taking responsibility for our feelings––and therefore miss the chance to become more awake, more whole, more useful friends to one another."

The Essay: The Gold in Niggers and Injuns