I sent an email on this general topic of grief and choice to a friend whom I respect, and I created this video pertaining to this topic and recorded my input in an ACOL meeting that I attend every Sunday. Seems apropos to utilize both email and recording here. My friend, like me, did time in prison; we have turned our lives around, written books, and speak publicly in an effort to make the world a better place to live in. My friend's name is Darryl Schoon. I'm reading one of his books, Light Shining in a Dark Place (the prison years). He included poetry in his book, which appeals to me, but only 5% of Americans read poetry, according to some data I occasioned online. I write poetry on AllPoetry and have been writing it since I was a young person. Poetry helped save my life. OK, so here's part of that email I referred to:
Amen, Brother. 100% Choice, all of life. In early recovery from Alcoholism, people in meetings would say with a lot of gratitude that they were glad they never killed someone during the many times they drove impaired. I thought it was an odd belief to represent in light that the consequences of our actions need not define us. They had the same 'disease' of Alcoholism as I did. Our lives looked different on the outside-in but were identical on the inside-out. We are more than our mugshot sort of a thing, maybe.
OK, another idea wraps into all this. I recall strong men in prison who melted like little frriggin' babies when their wives or women exited their lives. They would not show it easily on the yard, but you could tell something big was afoot. My friend Scott shared that his wife left him, and I felt positively lucky to not have family and loved ones in my life and celebrated having few to zero visits by anyone I knew.
My bio-brother came up once to visit. My bio-mom came up twice, but then got on a friends' visiting list and saw him weekly for some while. He eventually told me as much. LOL! She was visiting him and not me...and that's fine. It hurt a little and I mean 'a little'. I had no skin in the game. Anyway, here's the real point I would like to make. I always thought that I would rather have gone to prison for the crime I committed and endured all of the consequences, fair or unfair, than go through what Scott and others went through.
So, after I sobered up, I considered it a point of mature adaptation to perceive that every human being on the face of the earth (maybe sociopaths are exempt) endure exactly the same amount of pain that everyone else endures, and that's 100% of what they can endure. That a Great Equality in a way.
It might be accurate to say I paid a big price for my decisions, but it takes many among us 'slow learners' and 'gluttons for punishment' to wake up. To get to the point that someone 'normal' (a setting on the proverbial dryer?) would experience...such as when they accidentally slam their pet's foot in the door. Their heart may feel broken over it. Probably not an apt truth or comparison, but my point is NOT how we get to deep pain, but that we did so. 100 pounds of pain and one pound of pain create the exact same amount of deep surrender.
And what's more, grief ain't a contest, just like the length of time we've served in prison or the length of time one has been sober ain't a contest. It's what one gets from it that matters.
Here's a harsh reality. Little Timmy (the baby I killed while driving a stolen car under the influence of alcohol in 1977) and I both symbolically signed the same Sacred Contract; we're part of the same club or Team. Some people not comprehending forgiveness might say I am sanitizing the tragedy by calling it a Sacred Contract, that I was calling something that was 100% wrong, "OK" and minimizing my accountability. Well, guess what, I ain't their problem and they aren't mine, either. Little Timmy decided to give his life and I decided to spend the rest of mine doing something about it.
I have been listening to NDEs daily for a while. As usual, I see an overlap between our experiences and learnings. Well-put statement about life 'is a hell of a miracle' and after hell, comes the miracle.
Trigger Warning. When a guard was stabbed 61 times and experienced atrocities before dying, I in 20/20 hind vision learned that gang warfare of every variety is a 'justified' thing. It's a Just Us against 'others.' Someone near and dear to my heart said, "Love one another." The Philosopher Sartre said, "Hell is other people." OTHER people. One another is Unity. OTHER is separation consciousness, my definition of hell. Sartre's too, perhaps.
The killing goes on and on and on between every era and every people over thousands of years, yet it still goes on..why? Because so few among us have been unwilling to be The More Loving One (one of my favorite, life-changing poems by WH Auden). First in Love and Last in Love.