In my post on Monday about teachers who had touched my life, I left out — quite accidentally — the two “sponsors” who guided me through the Twelve-Step program over many years. “Jenia B.” and “Jack K.” loved me, nurtured me, and talked sense to me. it was through them that I learned some basic tools for how to live.
I was thinking about Jenia and Jack this morning as I read through John Spragge’s comments beneath this post. John writes:
Seriously, I don’t object to the notion of changing our thinking and behaviour; I only object to the notion that you or anyone else can tell us how to think and feel. Tell us what works for you, if you like, but don’t indulge the illusion that it will work for everyone else.
I have several problems with what John says here, but I’ve already addressed some of them in this post.
What John reminded me of is something my old sponsor Jack K. was fond of saying to me: “Hugo, just do the next right thing.” Not just the “right thing”, but the “next right thing.” Early on in my recovery, this was a vital tool. During the summer of 1998, for example, when I was just days and weeks removed from a serious suicide attempt and on the cusp of a dramatic conversion, I told myself to “do the next right thing” at least a dozen times a day.
During that strange, marvelous summer — the summer where I once and for all made the decision to live rather than to die — I had to think through the smallest actions. When the alarm went off in the morning, and I had to decide whether to get up and go to an early Twelve Step meeting or stay in bed, I would ask myself “Hugo, what is the next right thing to do?” And the answer usually was: “Get out of bed, put on some clothes, make some coffee, go to the meeting.” Once or twice it was: “Today, you’re exhausted. Stay in bed.”
When I found myself in a “slippery situation”, I asked myself the same question. During that summer and fall of ’98, I took the first vow of voluntary celibacy of my adult life. A few weeks into that period, I ran into an old “friend with benefits” on the street. Every corpuscle in my system longed to “connect” with her in the familiar way. And I asked myself, almost frantically, what the “next right thing” to do was — and found, to my amazement, that I was able to excuse myself from our flirtatious conversation and complete my errands. The next right thing that day had been to go and buy garbage bags, and the thought “Now I must go buy garbage bags” was what enabled me to walk away from a very tempting situation.
It’s been nearly a decade since I first relied on this tool to survive. These days, my inner compass is much more reliable, and my susceptability to stupid, self-destructive decisions is much lower. But I still use the “next right thing” tool to get me through. Now, it’s less about avoiding drugs, alcohol, and unethical sex than it is about making justice-based choices. When I go to the market, I ask myself: “what is the next right thing to buy?” I know, for example, that I really want coffee. I like certain kinds of coffee, so my own wants are part of the “right” decision. I also know that I want to spend my money as “rightly” as possible, and that means buying coffee that has been certified free-trade, shade-grown, and so forth. Thus the “next right thing” is to find the place where my wants and the world’s needs intersect.
I look for this intersection in every aspect of my life: how I eat, how I teach, how I interact with others in personal relationships. Sometimes, what I want and what the right thing to do is have no easy intersection. When I’m tired and a student asks me a really appallingly dumb question, I want to wring his or her neck — or at least make a witty and cruel remark. But most of the time, I swallow that anger and exasperation and find something supportive to say instead. The “next right thing” is often about redirecting certain of my impulses; it’s usually about being slightly less selfish and a bit more generous.
The “next right thing” is thus not about self-denial. It’s about finding that sweet spot between my deepest desires and the needs of the other creatures with whom I interact. It does require a certain amount of self-awareness, as well as a willingness to ask others to point out “blind spots”. But I can’t help but feel that the world would be a good deal better off if we all applied the “next right thing” model to our lives.
Every dollar I spend is a vote for the kind of world I want to see. Every word I speak, every action I take, has an impact — however slight — on others. Constant mindfulness is a tool for change. And I’m comfortable exhorting others to be equally mindful, even if they end up seeing the “next right thing” as something very different. This isn’t Puritanical self-absorbtion; rather’s it’s a tool for living justly and kindly. And it’s a tool that honors individual perspectives about what the “next right thing” is.
I agree with much of this. Part of overcoming grief and tragedy for me has been being mindful of how I live my life and all the choices i make. It is a good thing. That being said, it would drive me crazy to judge every action on it’s rightness and goodness. Mindful is good but that also, for me, means not stressing, thinking, fettling over every choice since it feels like i am spending my precious life on all sorts of trivial things. I try to be mindful of spending my energy on only what is worthwhile.
Like I said I agree with you on the concept, but different personalties express principles in a different manner.
Greg, I will say that that mindfulness changes over time. I was such a deeply unethical person for much of my life that, in those early years of sobriety, I had to think through EVERYTHING. But it’s like learning to drive a stick-shift — at first, you need to think carefully about the right moment to shift, to push in the clutch; after a while, it becomes second nature. It has been that way with me in many things, but I needed a period of “moral driver’s ed” first.
Great post, Hugo.
Right on.
I’d like to take that a bit further, and talk how we approach ethical conduct. Our discussion of ethics depends on a shared reference, a meeting place. And that meeting takes place in the physical world. Only there can we truly come together. What goes on in my mind, or yours, does not take place on this meeting ground, and though we can, and should, exhort each other to stay mindful of the way our actions affect others and our thoughts affect our actions, I don’t agree that we can presume to know what goes on in each other’s thoughts. By all means, let us remind each other that what we read, reflect on, think and feel matters, but let us all have the humility to accept, as you appear to above, that we truly cannot know, and cannot judge, what goes on in someone else’s mind. By any principle, whether economy of effort or respect for the autonomy of other people, I believe it makes sense to not try to control, by any means, what we think and feel about what we see and experience.
I agree we can’t presume what goes on in another’s thoughts. At the same time, I think that one type of thought — guilt — can be constructive, and indeed, we ought to encourage its selective use. When a child hits a playmate, we can say to the one who has been doing the hitting not only “Don’t hit” but “You shouldn’t hit other people because it makes them feel bad.” Guilt and empathy are closely linked, and we ought to be engaged in the process of forming “good thinking”.
After all, Buddhists get it — Right Thought is an important part of the Eightfold Path for a reason!
Quite good post. Perhaps some day you should do a meme: “Eight aphorisms that have kept me alive.”
Although I don’t know why eight, instead of ten. It just seems like eight is about the number of survival aphorisms I have.
That’s an awesome idea for a meme, pnts. I’ll do it!
Of course we should teach our children not to harm each other. And teaching our kids decent behavior provides the essential ground for them to make the connections which allow empathy to grow.
But when you start talking about “right thought”, you start to lose me. Our culture imposes its norms by profoundly impersonal and violent means. We live, as Rupert Ross memorably put it, in “a society of strangers.” Even those who try to resist the ugly side of our mass society fall victim to its assumptions and obsessions. Under these circumstances, boundaries play an essential role in our lives. And I insist that boundaries include, and ought to include, a separation between mass movement politics and our thoughts and feelings. Politics, as we understand the word in the twenty-first century post-enlightenment West, stops at my skin.
Politics, as we understand the word in the twenty-first century post-enlightenment West, stops at my skin.
Agreed. But ethics go down to the bone.
Right, Hugo.
But the ethics inform the politics, not the other way around. And our experiences inform the ethics, and (where we came in) determine different priorities or even entirely different courses for each of us us. And that, again, makes mutual respect, even (or perhaps especially) for those we disagree with essential for those who face these issues.
Oh, by the way…
Merry Christmas!