THE STORY OF JOHNNY WHOOPER SWAN We go to school trusting our parents. We meet a teacher there who stands up front with a big desk, and a pointer. She or he trains us in an authoritative manner. We attach mentally to a life long need for authority in order to live lives successfully. Right so far? In my case, at the age of 25 I was ready to enter the practice of law where I hoped for success and a happy life finally. Very shortly, very shortly, I became anxious. There was a foreboding. I was made more uncomfortable with each experience. Law work is nothing like what I was told it would be. The system is corrupt. But I still cling to my expectation that career success is necessary to my happiness as a man. Each day my grasp of what the fuck success amounts to after all becomes more clouded, murkier. I hear songs on the airwaves and at concerts which describe my life as the life of a fool. What am I becoming? I want to rip off my business suit to run naked in the street with my hair on fire! But I am too afraid. In strange, weird (weird comes from a word meaning wise), fragmented steps I go about a journey of my own believing myself to be the first man to have failed in such a total way which journey works so as to break up my career, end a marriage, and start an entirely new way of relating with my two children whom I love deeply. Almost magically I meet a woman who is a career counselor who asserts a beautiful message that I am made to be joyful in my work everyday and at all levels. This understanding sets me on a completely new course. It is no longer a world of systems to me but an undivided one of unlimited beauty. It reminds me of a painting. A true masterpiece. I am drawn from within to learn the truth about my identity and nobody else can teach me that. From this point onward I will use thinking capacity for mastering mechanical processes and follow my heart, which includes my whole nature, which includes your whole nature and that of every human being for all the rest. I’ll go by the name Johnny Whooper Swan who does not explain itself to anyone. By my fruits shall I be known. Watch me soar!

Monday, November 6, 2017

So, I have  a friend who is one of my first sponsees in AA.  He has been sober up to five years back in the nineties and a few short times since. He is as good a human being as I have ever known.

He got into heroine a while back. His wife is an addict and her son as well.  All three have been living in the woods near the City. For a number of years my friend lived under bridge. We have talked off and on over these years but he could not really say he wanted to be sober. Recently he called and we talked and he said, I want to get sober. I heard that. We went for a ride to visit another alcoholic we both know who is sober and had a bad fall from a ladder on a job and was in ICU then the hospital and then rehab. He has serious injuries but is recovering. Shortly after that my friend called me to say he was catching a bus to a hospital to check himself in because he felt he was about to die. I visited him several times in ICU then in the general hospital and now he is in rehab.  He called tonight.  His voice is strong and he is laughing and he is so grateful to be alive.  He tells me the people at the Rehab are treating him so kindly he cannot believe it.  He is sleeping, eating like a horse and exercising.  They told him today they will try very hard when he is released to have him a place to live. He proudly told me they gave him some new clothes that match. Also because he pushes other patients around in wheelchairs they want to hire him. I will go visit him tomorrow, My heart soars like the hawk!  I heard a song this morning with this line in it and it is my life story.  It goes-

Stop fighting the fight that has already been won

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