wanting

There are lots of songs that describe the human condition of being incomplete (of needing or wanting more), a condition that seems particularly acute in addicts. That void (or those voids—there were many in my life) and the accompanying fears (I will lose my job/house/car/mind, I will die alone, I will go to jail) in many ways defined my life.

Because I’m a child of the 80s, Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough and Duran Duran’s All She Wants Is (More) are songs that immediately came to mind after this completely random Johnny Cash song “Belshazzar” showed up on my iPod yesterday.

When I heard the line “he was weighed in the balance and found wanting,” it occurred to me wanting more and being incomplete are the same thing. And that choice is up to me. Either I have enough or I don’t. If I am wanting/expecting/waiting for/needing anything in my life, I am choosing not to be whole and complete.

I’m not a biblical scholar (or a biblical anything), but I wonder if Adam & Eve’s sin wasn’t wanting more, or disobeying God, but rather not being grateful in the first place. Granted, they didn’t have the comparables we have today to reinforce our gratitude for us (they couldn’t really say There but for the grace of God, cause it was just them, right?).  I’m probably just projecting the importance gratitude plays in my own life onto biblical characters–but for me, a lack of gratitude is deadly.

It took a whole lot of effort for me to be grateful for anything when I came into the program (and not just on my part—it took a counselor in treatment forcing me to keep an active gratitude list for me to be able to begin to see all that I have to be thankful for). In order for me to be usefully, happily whole, first I have to be whole, and for me, that first means being grateful. And I am.

I am coming up on 2.5 years meth-free in a few weeks. There are lots of things that have not turned out the way I wanted them to turn out since I’ve been sober. But when I go to bed each night, I am thankful for each day. I want for nothing.