I really adored Mr. Cogar's thoughts on empathy. It certainly has not been something I set out for in my life as a special interest to cultivate, but the more spiritually evolved I become the more empathetic I become. Empathy requires that we reserve judgment. It was a huge moment for me when I realized I could be very disappointed for a person without being disappointed in a person.

When we recognize the part of us that is spirit/high power/God, it makes it impossible not to see the spirit part in others regardless of how at odds it is with the human part at the time. Humans are so messy. Driven by countless fears and an egoic mind set that insist we be right at all times, we are all, ALL of us very hard to love at times. I guess my own definition for empathy is to be willing to see the spirit trying in someone regardless of their circumstance.

There are different types of empathy and they boil down sometimes to the difference in being "store bought" or "homemade". The "Store bought" variety can be categorized when you acknowledge struggle of another from a brain/cognitive point of view. The "Homemade" variety is when you live in a state of connection to spirit and gratitude that your spirit is producing it's own source of Empathy, the emotional, spiritual connection with others.

Both a valid and both are good, but those who find their way to an empathetic state of being by thinking themselves there, will never experience the power of connection with the story of others through the spirit- empathetic awareness. There has long been detailed the people who take musical lessons and learn the fingering and the counting of the notes but never ever are able to convey the emotions of the pieces they play. There is a component to spirit that is lacking in them. Their dedication and study still is hard work that must have acknowledgment but they cannot interpret the passion of the piece the way that others do without trying. 

Not everyone has the capacity to feel the plight or passion of others. Being empathetic and compassion is very difficult in the aspect that if you don't learn how to manage what I believe to be spiritual gifts, they can easily overwhelm you. 

Every year I get a little angry at all the people trying to bust the door down of the Mission on 80 trying to serve "Thanksgiving and Christmas" to the unfortunate. If I worked there I would ask them, "would you consider June 3 or August 6th, we have all the compassionate folks we need for Christmas and Thanksgiving". "Can u still find it important to serve some Parker House Dinner Rolls when it isn't an act designed by you to make you feel better about yourself while doing the least amount possible".

That is an example of "Store Bought" empathy. It's too planned and calculated. Real empathy is only possible for those of us who know that, "What we have is enough", "Giving you a break" won't leave me without one, "Recognizing your struggle", won't sweep me into it and all of us have monsters two inches from our tails and most of us just no how to disguise the panic better than others.

It's long been said that we are spiritual beings having a human experience and I know personally speaking when I operate from spirit, I have no trouble at all honoring and acknowledging the struggle and pain of others. It is only when my ego and "human" concerns overshadow my gratitude that I forget that judgment is not necessary. I lose nothing, NOTHING by acknowledging your struggle and I gain a connection to spirit that cannot be found any other way.

People want to go immediately to the sick or homeless when they picture struggle. I've been aware and lucky enough to have learned to look wherever I am. I know a single mother starting to work full time for the first time in years. She's frightened and she's doing it. I know a mother who's two children are at an age where they clearly see their father can't stop drinking. I know a teenager who has to go live with relatives he didn't even know he had in order to stay out of foster care. I know old people who can't afford their medicine. I know a young girl who just realized she is obese when the kids at school pointed it out. I know several people who work as hard as long as they can and they can't pay their bills. The stories of the human condition fill the pages and the hours of the history of the world. I haven't forfeited a thing by having concern for them.

I lose nothing by seeing and validating your struggle. The Ego says I need to fix the struggle but the spirit only asks me to acknowledge 

Complex and alternately beautiful laws of God come in to play when I try to explain this inexpiable truth, we are all connected. When I honor your struggle with acknowledgement I honor my own, loving you when you make it very difficult to even like you, I gain my own self acceptance. When I honor the part of God in you, the part of God in me expands exponentially. 

Gratitude, empathy and compassion are the three ingredients that give me a good life today. They keep my spirit growing, my human side (ego) in check and they make me feel almost on a daily basis, it's all worth showing up for.

I'll end with this. When I was young I had a Beagle. It' was a sweet sweet dog without a vicious bone in it's body. One day it got hit by a car and my dad rushed out to help it and it tried to bite my dad's hand off. When we are led by pain and fear, real or imagined, all of us, are very hard to love. Empathy AND Compassion help me look beyond the ugliness of pain and see a spirit in crisis.

That helps me get through my day.

Clinton Gandy

Gladewater, Texas

I spent the whole day doing whatever I wanted to do. Ate some good food, stopped by and fixed my mom's computer and even played some keno for a couple of hours. I had a sobering thought when I sat down at home finally that came from left field, There are mother's, fathers, sisters and brothers who spent their whole day trying to get enough food to survive one more day. I'm very thankful my primary goal for the day didn't have to be find enough food for my kids to not starve to death today. I'm not sure I am built for that kind of survival mode. So what I do or don't watch on Netflix and what temperature I set the air on for bed for the night is just about as high as high class problems as they come. Color me GRATEFUL as I know how to be.

My phone's gps kind of screws me now and then, but I learned something about living more fully and peacefully from it yesterday. For reasons unknown to me, sometimes my gps decides to change languages without warning. I was trying to find a thrift store in Tyler and I was in a part of the city I had never been through. GPS went Japanese on me and I missed the turn I wanted. I fought back the urge to yell at the cheerful Asian voice coming from my phone. I looked down and the gps said, "Re-calibrating".

It was so simple. I missed the turn, I'd have to rely on another way to get to where I was going. It would be fantastic to be a human with the ability to give ourselves freely the permission to "Recalibrate" when it looks like we have missed a turn in our lives. The fact is there is probably millions of ways to get to where i want to go, but I sure can beat the hell out of myself when I miss a turn.

Re-calibrating and re-configuring are super powers we humans when we have the PRESENCE of mind to stop and adjust our little plans. One of my favorite things to tell myself when something doesn't go the way I want it to is "This story is not going to end as you want it to, move on". When I come to acceptance, that place where the fact that things are or not the way I want then ceases to be an issue. It is what it is and I have the choice of growing roots where I am or recalibrating.

Just for today, I give myself permission to re-calibrate whenever necessary and without personal judgement. "This road isn't going to take you where you want to go". Recognize that and look for the alternate route.

In the end, there will be a piece of land. A small strip of land where our lives played out on, the highs the lows, the laughs the tears. Our stories while deathly important to us in the now, in the "then" won't even be a foot note in history. The place where medals were awarded for dreams and work of a life time will rightfully be relegated to being a decaying concrete platform in the middle of an empty field like this medals podium from a former Olympics. How many things in my life that seemed like the most important thing in the world have been laughingly right sized by time and perspective. Life has a way of right-sizing all of us. Take away the TV cameras and the pageantry and human emotion and all you have left is a piece of land where a story played out on. The earth came first and it will truly tell the final tale. One strip of land where the story of Clinton Gandy unfolded, where he clomped and stomped and occasionally chewed the scenery in an epic grand opera revolving his search for significance. I don't know why I find it such an appealing idea of the future stories of strangers that will be told right where my feet are standing now. It does appeal to me though. There is peace is the idea that my story is just another human story that plays out on the planet which is the third rock from the sun. It's my story, I'm happy to have it and I"m interested in seeing how it wraps up but just to know it's no more important than yours or less important allows me to enjoy the moment of being here. I"m thankful to have cast a shadow on the earth long enough to find and accept my place on it. I'm so thankful just to have the time to tell the story, to live the story these days. I guess we all have "decaying medal platforms" where ego and pageantry prevailed. I think of painstakingly carved graffiti in wooden tables. The simple epitaph of "Clinton Was Here" scratched into the surface will be sufficient. The simple fact I got to be here is enough. The idea that billions of people saw gold and silver medals awarded on this platform and it to be now in an unkempt parcel of land really speaks volumes about humanity. I'm good with words but I can't seem to verbalize the significance of this photo to my spirit. I've looked at it a dozen times. It's haunting. I love knowing that someone elses story will play out in the apartment I live in right this minute, someone else will have the job I have this minute, I love knowing that life and land go on when I no longer am cells filled with water casting a shadow. It makes my life on a daily basis much easier to know I am not the end all be all of anything. I am properly, right sized and grateful to be , as my buddy Frank T. used say, "fully clothed and in my right mind".

Depression is very much the same phenomenon as childbirth. Unless you have actually been through the human occurrence you will never be able to have a breathing comprehension of either of them. All the most talented writers in the world can not accurately depict pain like that with words so average Joe can comprehend. 

If you don't know how someone with money and fame could kill themselves, you should count yourself one of the luckiest people on the planet. I understand completely when people take their own lives. I've been a double winner because I have both clinical depression and an addiction that allows me to use most anything chemical to the point of destruction.

The first time I knew that something was wrong with me was in fourth grade. I woke up and my soul hurt so much I couldn't get out of bed. I had no idea what caused that complete collapse of feelings and hope but it was real and it was profound.

In my teenage years I began to self medicate with food then alcohol. The worst thing in the world a person with depression can do is use a depressant like alcohol. Beyond the temporary euphoric sensations, the use of alcohol sets up deeper darker depression.

In the 90's with the birth of Prozac, I pinned my hopes on the little pill with the big buzz in the recovery world. I can't tell you how disappointed I was when it did nothing for me. From the year of 1992 to about 2010, I was tried out on 33 different medications to alleviate the darkness and pain I carried with me.

In 2010 my psychiatrist of a decade or more looked me dead in the eyes and "Clinton, there is no pill on the market that is going to fix what is wrong with you. The best I can help you do is use medication to get you on stable enough ground that if you want to feel better, it's up to you to do the work to make it happen". H may have said it before or this could have been the first time, but I HEARD it this day.

I realized at that moment, I had been looking for a pill to fix me.  I thought, there was a pill on the planet that would fill in all my cracks, to magically give me coping skills or to make me whole in a way I never was. I heard what he told me and did just that. I got sober, took the meds he prescribed and started crawling out of my isolation. I learned coping skills by going into weekly therapy and joining a 12 step group.

There is a darkness that once it settles inside a human susceptible to despair, that light cannot reach. One aspect of my depression is my mind never shut off. It constantly was trying to produce an idea that would get me out of the misery. I didn't sleep because I tried to think myself to sleep at night. There is a point when no matter what the cost, you are compelled to quiet the mind.

I lost a friend last year to a violent bloody suicide. Some people were shocked. I undersood. I have a weird reaction to suicide. I always feel like nodding my head and saying I understand. I understand not being able to find a way out of the thought storms inside your head. There are millions and millions of people who have no idea the torture of thoughts that won't turn off, a mind that will not settle. For some of us, hope has been a suckers bet. I ache for all those lost in plain sight, a thick glass wall separates some of us unlucky bastards that keeps us from touching all the good stuff.We watch the lives of others like looking at newborns in the hospital. Just out of reach and our nose pressed against the thick last window.

 I say this about Robin Williams as I have said about my friend Rusty's successful suicide last year, I hope that he finds the peace in death that eluded him in life. I believe that whatever put the universe together is merciful.  I know a lot of "early exits" and I nod in understanding to each one. I respect others pain today and I understand despair from the inside out. Just because I have strung some very good days together doesn't mean one day I might be looking for my own early exit. I'm sure Robin didn't dream it would end this way either. The world can be shocked and horrified but I, completely understand.

Just for today, I have a reprieve. I am not cured and the specter of doom and despair always waits for me should I quit doing the things I have to do in order to function like a whole person.

I have a warning to all those people that judge Robin Williams and the "Robins" of the world, until you have been wrapped in another's despair or trapped in a mind that won't turn off, you are not qualified to judge. Pain that doesn't end will drive humans to desperate measures.

The famous line about suicide is that it is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and I think the person that said it never fought with the monster of Depression. It is hideous, heinous and it robs all of us,those who suffer with it and those who love the sufferer.

Think for yourself, draw your own conclusions.

I've never been a good follower. It seems to me that one draw of gang mentality young people have is that there is seemingly stability and safety joining other lost angry souls banded together to claim spaces and properties. They use hand codes and colors to signal to the world this is who I am. I am gang member X. In theory, there is stability of sorts and safety when we join giant herds of folks. In reality they are telling us what to think and what to wear and who to love and which to vote for.

There are times I have so desperately wished that i could just "drink the Koolaide" and follow the cows in the mindless herd. I wished I WERE Democrat or Republican or a Rotarian or even a Shriner just to name a few ready-made herds to fall into. It is easier to follow than to think original thoughts. It's easy to go with what is popular and ignore all signs my spirit is hurling at me that this doesn't fit me, this isn't for me, this is someone else's idea of safety, someone else's idea of "right" , someone else's idea of what is right.

I wasn't raised to think independently. It's not something I learned how to do in the home or in the school. I sort of came to earth with an immunity to herd mentality. I never fell into a group that wanted to think for me that felt "right". Even in Narcotics Anonymous which I credit solely for making a human out of me, the main goal for members is to quit using and have our own unique, one of a kind experience as a sober human,so that we can share our EXPERIENCE with others.

It suffocates me when I see smart, thoughtful people manipulated by news channels, talking heads, media outlets ran people people who need them to be so frightened and concerned about losing what is already theirs, or not getting what they someday want, they happilly turn over pocket books and votes to the man with the loudest microphone. Fearful people, panicked people can be taught to dance like puppets because they no longer listen to their own production of thoughts and feelings about what is right or wrong.

I don't see how that could be a very spiritually or emotionally fulfilling way to live.Giant religious organizations depend on people not asking questions, our government would rather us not delve into all of the comings and going and financials of them. People have to be held accountable in some form or another and that requires someone to question things.

At the birth of our Nation, someone started the thought process that England taxing the crap out of the Settlers was intolerable. Average people started the underground railroad to get slaves out of hell in the south. My head and spirit cannot wrap themselves around the idea that no one close to Hitler didn't object to his crazy plan and his murderous. heinous acts and kill him when his back was turned.

Edmond Burke wrote "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".

That happens when no one is thinking original thoughts, no one is coming up with their own ideas about what is right or wrong in their own eyes. I have no desire , to live disconnected from my own experience. If I dress like you, wear my hair like you, talk like you, or vote like you, I would be having YOUR experience and not my own. I am clear about many things, one central one is I am a spirit having a human experience. That experience needs to be my own. No, it has to be. I need medication when I'm not living my own truth. I need medication in order to try and kill off the part of me that says "This isn't right", the part of me that knows the good part of me is comatosed.

The very human side of me knows it would be easier to fall into a ready made identity as a human. It would be too easy for my human part to embrace the identity of being an Aggie or a Longhorn, a Tea Partier, a Christian, a Buddhist and stop there. Like manufactured homes that come with furniture, homes that all you have to do is hang your clothes in the closet and BAM! You are done. Do we Embrace any of the prefab identities and just be done with the hard questions of "Who the hell am i" and "What do I believe"?

If it weren't for the part of me connected to something BIGGER than me, it would be easy to submit to a ready made me. The truth for me is, it isn't fulfilling to be a Lemming. I was born rejecting the categories that humans are suppose to fall into. My instinct wants to say I tried very hard to fit in the shadow boxes that the world created that let others know who we are and what we are about, but I think maybe I never really did try that hard. I understood from the get-go on some level beneath my thought that "this cutout" wasn't me. The real pain came for shoving my big foot into someone else's tiny shoe.

I've learned to love the fact that I have my own perspective. I see things differently that anyone I know. It's great to bump into someone that shares some common views with me but, it isn't my end game strategy. I'm here for MY own strange, trippy, trip. This is my spiritual journey in human form and it would be the biggest waste in the history of man for me to let someone else be in charge of my journey. I'm responsible. I'm responsible for what I know, and one thing I know is no one can think for me, love for me, live for me or learn for me. I am responsible for my journey, I am responsible for myself. Today, just for today, I am responsible.

In the end, and I do mean the very end, it will not matter what title is in front of my name or the letters and designations that do/do not follow it. It will not matter what a big fine house I lived in or it will not matter what a big fine car I drove. At that end, what I did strictly for me , dies with me.  All that will remain is the ripple effect of the things I  touched with kindness, love and forgiveness.. I hope my ripple effect reflects the touch of peace. the touch of creativity. the touch of compassion, the touch of grace and the joy of laughter. When I lay down in that fateful field of strangers or my ashes take flight into the four winds, I hope I’ve left a ripple, that then became a wave.

In 5th grade i had a teacher named Mrs. Killion. She was a large chested round southern black woman who had a penchant of saying "I'm from Missouri, You have to SHOW ME" For those of you like myself, who never heard this old saying, it is one of the unofficial state mottoes. It meant nothing to me at the time but I woke up this morning thinking about some of the young boys at the place where I work, specifically when they are hit with a big feeling and they don't know what to do with it. Most of the time whatever the feeling is consumes them like a dry tree in a forest fire. No one has ever shown them what to do with a big feeling.

I've shared bits and pieces of this concept before but I personally keep revisiting it because I'm just not through with it yet. We are born human but people have to show us, model for us what humanity looks and feels like.

Case in point, my dad used to raise exotic birds like Parrots and Macaws. Some pairs would lay eggs and daddy would have to take the eggs immediately out of the nest box, because the birds did not know how to sit on the eggs and keep them warm. Other birds new how to sit on the eggs but the moment the baby birds hatched, the parents abandoned them and they would starve to death because the birds just didn't know how to raise their babies. Those babies were pulled the moment they hatched and fed by my stepmother with a tiny eyedropper every 2 hours for weeks.

The birds had been bred in captivity so long that the parenting/ reproduction skill sets were completely lost. None of them could parent because they never saw it done and the instinct literally left them.

It's a big ass deep thought for me when I see boys of 14 consumed by anger or fear. No one ever taught them healthy ways of dealing with big feelings. No one taught me either and I mistakenly assumed that I was suppose to magically no how to do it. I felt ashamed at my lack ability to function through big emotion, I thought it was a defect of personality on my part. I didn't know that I was supposed to have been shown what do.

I get it now. Kids need to be shown what love looks like. They need to see how you treat the people you love and what your words sound like when you deal with your loved ones. Kid's need to see what forgiveness looks like . They need ringside seats to when compassion is shown to those who can do nothing for you. They need to see perseverance when a dream is collapsing down on someones head and they need to see that feelings aren't fatal. Neither is "failure".

We cannot rise above our level of programming. If we failed to get any quality programming or modeling as a child and lessons in humanity, we aren't magically going to wake up with them as adults. I'm reprogramming myself on a daily basis with a multitude of sources of new ideas, I'm gathering things I either missed as a child or wasn't exposed to. One big ass ugly feeling isn't enough today to shut me down completely and declare Marshall Law. It is only because I have witness friends and associates face the impossible and get through it that I am able to tell myself "My story doesn't end here". My peers and friends "model" those things that make me a good, capable, functioning human today and I learn from everyone I come in contact with.

I may have those moments when I get so mad it feels like i have been doused and soaked in gasoline and lit on fire, but I don't go into "ULTIMATE SELF DESTRUCT" mode when it happens.

How do we teach children that we are not slaves to our emotions, that one bad feeling isn't enough to implode upon ourselves. How do we let kids know, that what your having is a feeling and it will most certainly pass. Just don't take an action where you harm yourself or others and don't let the bad feeling have so much power you give away your future because of the pain of the present.

We all have to be shown. We joke about life not coming with a manual, it's because actions speak louder than words. I guess I'm am from Missouri, "You got to show me" too Mrs. Killion.

My favorite quote is from actress, alcholic, drug addict, clinically depressed, bipolar Carrie Fisher, who said. "Losing your mind is a terrible thing but once it's gone it's fine. Completely fine, because there is no longer a part of you that knows the rest of you is missing" I kept waiting for the part of me that KNEW the rest of me was missing to die off so I could embrace the coma and find peace in my mind.

What I figured out is the part that would give up, that knew there was indeed something missing was my spirit. My mind gave up long ago but the spirit just wouldn't freaking relent. I have no human reason to come up with that explains how I found the nerve and strength to try to salvage this trip of mine, in this body on the third rock from the sun but it happened.

My gambling friend Kay was terribly terribly ill for a good period and the doctors couldn't find out what was wrong with her. She said she made a promise that if she ever felt well enough to return to the land of living she would go and not stop, that is what she vowed to do. She got better and she is a crazy ,cyclonic force of life to be reckoned with today. I think the biggest perk of coming back for the edge of darkest dark, is this overwhelming gratitude just to be here at the party- Invited, honored, grateful guests. I can't imagine what the story , my story, would have been had I got the thing i prayed for countless times, literally in hot water up to my neck in a garden tub so large you could have misplaced a Volvo in it. My desperate nekkid prayer was to let me out of the mess or let me surrender the part that knew the rest of me was missing.

I see people, displaced, disenfranchised, discombobulated and detached. They have no part of them left that knows the other part is missing and it does NOT look like the respite I sought.They, these men without homes or attachment, wander in the NA hall which is down from the Rescue Mission, for a free cup of coffee. Skin so beaten by the cruel rays of sun it's like thick untreated cheap South American leather. Fingers, darkened to the point of looking like old cigars, hair untended, unkempt and defiant. They walk in and make eye contact with no one, Sometimes they consciously or unconsciously run their ruddy fingers across their wild hair as if there might still be a thread of a person inside that once knew a social grace. Some mutter or sometimes shout at the voices in their own heads but mostly, they just remind me that sometimes there is the most beautiful grace of all is unanswered prayer.

I talked to a homeless man in the hall a couple of years ago, it was springtime and the storms had been occurring regularly we get in April and May here. I don't know how he got from Texarkana to Longview but he came for Mother's Day. His mother was buried in the cemetery behind Krogers and he had slept the night before our conversation, on what he called his mother's land- which was just big enough for the box she was buried in, underneath him in the cemetery behind the Kroger. The meeting started , he got one more cup of coffee and then he returned to wherever people go when they disappear. It rained again that night and I thought about him looking to make a connection with something, anything, even it was a plot of dirt and a headstone marking the life and death of his mother. Perhaps all he was sure of was he was once this woman's son.

He told his story with out emotion, it was just matter of fact, he was completely removed and unaware of the tragedy and depth of his accounting. He showed me, and people all around show me exactly what it looks like when " there is no longer a part of you left that knows the rest of you is missing" really looks like. It didn't and doesn't seem like a solution to me today, the killing of the "kwowing" of my "being". Frankly, I don't think I even ever really came close to it. There was always this crazy tiny voice, perhaps the voice of God, perhaps the voice of Mrs. Butterworth, who knows, but something kept whispering, and though I wasn't aware I was listening it kept stating " the story need not end today,the story need not end here."

The author of my favorite quote is still here too. She speaks and she writes in a voice I understand, a wisdom I too have earned from my dance with the "darkest dark". She writes in gratitude and with a humor that all can appreciate but only those who have tried repeatedly to disappear within ourselves forever truly can breath in fully.

I say a prayer for the people so locked up in themselves, that fail to recognize any part of themselves any longer. It's so easy to get lost and so very hard to fight your way back. It's a fight worth fighting. I haven't been trapped in my own thoughts in a long time. I know longer try to "think" myself to sleep at night, but most miraculous is, I know who I am today and I know the sound of my own voice and I like the sound of it. I LIKE the truth as i have unearthed it for myself, to blaze a streak across my computer screen and hopefully shine the light from it into the God awful "Darkest of Darks" in some other poor son of a bitches life who surrendered to the wrong thing.

'Do NOT SURRENDER DOROTHY!"

As my dear kindred likes to say, "That is all, carry on"! You know i don't have the ability to see my typos and errors hope it still reads ok. I'm a writer that prefers content over the crossing of the T's and the dotting of the I's. But that's just me.

This is a true, true testament to recovery and the changes it brings about. My whole life, I have never wanted too many "things". I didn't want belongings. I left a few apartments full of everything I owned and just took my clothes when I felt it was time to go. I've never found that possessions made me feel like most others do with "their stuff". I got no identity from the things I owned or the car I drove/drive. In fact there have been times when I gave away or threw away stuff when I felt like I had to much "stuff".

When I moved into my apartment I had basically a bed, a tv and a computer and some clothes. Five months into it, I have a love seat by a great great maker, and things I have picked up that I connected with on some level. A couple weeks ago I had a moment of panic when I was leaving because i realized, I had "things" and I really liked them. When I got my new TV my mom mentioned checking into renters insurance. My first inclination was, I don't have anything worth insuring. Finally a couple of days ago it dawned on me, if someone in my 8 unit vintage complex burned this place down by accident, I would have to start all over.

I love my tiny apartment and every piece of furniture, wall hangings and yes, FABRIC that covers the pine paneled great wall of Gladewater. I got renters insurance today. Me, the guy wanted to own nothing, to be responsible for nothing, to "never own more than I can fit in the back of a Chevette Hatchback" got insurance on MY STUFF. At least this way if the worst happens, I won't have to start with nothing again. I have grown accustomed to how my "home rises up to meet me" when I open the front door.

I told Stephanie tonight via text the twist and turn of life make it interesting. Don't know whether this is a twist or a turn but it is yet another surprising element of living a recovered life. God, what next, a baby?