12 January 2018

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Are YOU the Fifteenth Stone?


In youth, I sought self-knowledge by pluck and luck, striving to uncover a self-identity. Getting nowhere fast, my self-knowledge was obscured, blurred and most certainly delayed by the 30-year chemical assault of alcohol and other drugs on my spirit, my body and my brain. Where I picked myself up after that 30-year onslaught on my senses ended was not where I left off as a teen. When I got off the bus after my first rehab hospital, I felt like I had entered a personal, futureless wasteland. Lost, directionless. Somehow, I began. My recovery has been a long, continuing journey of who... how... when. 
Early in my recovery, I ran across this THOUGHT EXPERIMENT (source unknown):

"Somewhere, Japan or China, who knows? San Francisco? A garden exists somewhere, a rock garden: let's say the size of a tennis court. You can walk completely around it, but you are not allowed to cross its borders. This rock garden contains fifteen large stones of varying sizes, say, knee to chest high. And this rock garden is so constructed that no matter where you stand on the garden's perimeter, only fourteen of the stones are ever visible. One stone, forever changing, is always hidden from view. Fifteen stones in the garden, and no matter where you stand, only fourteen are visible."
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The possibilities of sober tomorrows are the unknown treasures at my feet. Torn apart, destroyed, by substance or by self, by fear or doubt or a thousand endless emotions known and unknowable, I am here to stay, for now, for this one day.
Seek, strive on, celebrate!
The chemical assault is over, has been over, will continue to be... Over!
My Fifteenth Stone... Unstoned at Last!


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Pictured: (Derbies' Twist Modern Stone Circle: Fallmore, Ireland. Photographed by Pierre Lapointe on Pinterest)

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"Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more." 
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#Alcoholism #Addiction #Recovery
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Passages in quotes are excerpted from All Drinking Aside: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal
 http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO
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