Senseless

The best things in the world don’t make any sense at all.

And yet, somehow, we don’t value what doesn’t make sense.

This explains virtually every advent of technology. The market to make living more sensible will never falter.

I experience this basic human need to reason in the classroom. Students unfailingly crave the sure thing. They want to be told exactly what they need to get a good grade.

Surety, in this regard, is a powerful tool. Students are willing to hang on every word if they believe that every word you say later could be rearranged into successful answers. Some students are so hardwired to care about outcomes that they actively neglect all other purposes in school. This is why they ask “Will this be on the test?” and “Are you collecting this?” ad nauseum.

I’m sure that in subjets other than literature, where only one answer exists, filtering out incorrectness is an academic strength. But the purpose of books is to open the mind to possibilities. Students loathe my answers: “By asking me if this is on the test, you have already failed.” They take me literally. Some of them think I will give them an F on some assignment called Johnny’s willingness to learn.

Literature is powerful because—in a rapidly shrinking world—it knows no bounds. Studying literature is powerful because students can learn that there is always something more to discover no matter how much is discovered for them.

I have learned this gradually.

I was no different than my students when I was their age. Whatever I did required a good reason for doing it.

My venture into the irrational world of imagination and spirit was completely unexpected. It took be my surprise.

It wasn’t until I got sober—15 years ago this October—that I first learned to trust and tame the dark regions of my mind. I can easily recall my first lesson in the senseless.

Picture me at age 24, sitting in a circle with close to 30 other men. I am the youngest of the group. The men there had lost jobs, pensions, livelihoods, homes, wives, children. The only thing I lost was my mind. Sure, I was broke and living off scraps in the company kitchen, but I also wasn’t responsible for providing for anybody.

I had every reason to believe I didn’t belong there. In the course of my drinking career, I used reason to build walls of protection around my habits. For years I refused to drink in the morning or drink alone because I read in a pamphlet that that’s what alcoholics do.

Curious about how alcoholism falls into the category of mental illness? Imagine drinking to a blackout on a regular basis, getting picked up by the cops in a stupor, lying, sneaking out and stealing alcohol. Then tell yourself you don’t have a problem because you don’t drink in the morning. It defies logic, but it follows your own reasoning—this is the alcoholic’s insanity.

What rehab did for me is put me in a room with 30 other men who were just as crazy as I was. I heard them speak and could relate to the things they said, but the mental walls I built were reinforced with steel.

They were also slowly closing in on my conscious—cornering it for extinction. Thankfully, it broke free one morning when the group gave me a prayer to read.

I was holding on tight in those first few days of rehab. I wasn’t going to let anybody in. I look back now and I can imagine how annoying and stubborn I must have been. When I went to the group’s one year reunion, no one could believe I was the same person who refused to shake their hand or pass the ketchup one year earlier.

One of the reasons I drank as much as I did was that I kept getting away with it. I was still functioning at work—if you define functioning as not getting fired. I was eating—however minimally I could afford to eat. I was sleeping—barely. Only doing the very basics to survive allowed my mind to reason that I was okay—and that allowed my habit to remain a habit.

The morning I held that prayer in my hands, I tried as best as I could to piece it together. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, maybe it was the Abilify leveling out the chemical imbalance in my brain, maybe it was time for God to intervene—whatever the reason, I spoke the words for the first time, “My name is Mark and I am an alcoholic.” It didn’t make sense. I would never say such a thing. I had worked and persevered through adverse circumstances, punitive consequences, mental anguish. Why give up now?

It was an out-of-body experience. I heard myself say the words. It was like a different person was speaking altogether. It was the single biggest risk I had taken in my life. Please understand me here. I was in frequent street fights in California late at night. I once trespassed naked on Mexican farmland. My driving under the influence was a reckless endangerment to life. But such risks were nothing compared to that great leap of faith: to journey from believing God not within to knowing that God is.

I return to the memory of those words often. And I return to how those words made me feel even more frequently. I was set free that day. And what set me free made absolutely no sense. It was irrational, confusing and nonsensical. And it saved my life.

That voice is difficult to hear.

The world and all of its demands is like static on an old tv set or a radio frequency that can’t quite pick up the tune. It is a din. The only thing that quiets it, in my experience, is that voice that comes to me when I’m desperate enough to need it.

My writing has been an effort for me to turn up the volume on that voice, to take whatever words are whispered and amplify them.

Still, to this day, I find that my reasonable and calculating mind can easily crumble if I just find the courage to say, “Yes, I am,” or “Thank you, God.”

About four weeks ago, I received a text from my wife asking, no, pleading for permission to adopt a puppy. She is a resilient woman. And I guess when you’re dealing with me, the law of averages will eventually work. Ask a man to do something absolutely irrational seventy-two times, and one of those times, in some moment of weakness, he will agree.

And so, as if we the time to raise this thing, we drove with our kids to adopt Rocky, a two-month-old Beagle.

The voice of love won again.

And when I hold that pup or watch my children play with it, I realize something truly absurd: I hope I lose again soon.