Taking Five

I needed that break. 

A full two weeks off at Christmas.

We didn’t go anywhere. 

We didn’t do anything special. 

But it was a break. 

We stayed at home without obligations on our time and attention. 

It wasn’t good for me to teach from home as I have been.

This goes beyond the awkwardness of telling my literature class to hold on while I help my son distinguish the tens place on his math worksheet. It goes beyond having to mute myself mid-lecture so the students don’t hear the caterwauling baby now from her nap. 

It was something more than inconvenience and disruption.

I joked with one class in the fall during one of my homebound broadcasts: “Here’s something I never imagined saying to this group: welcome to my home.”

That is what I haven’t been able to shake. 

Online teaching has been, in part, a perversion of boundaries. Namely, my home and the classroom are not intended to mix. Aside from all the interruptions, I ended live video streams with this vague and sinking feeling that something was fundamentally wrong here. My home became my classroom the way a cucumber becomes a pickle. There was no turning back. 

This was only a feeling. I know. Feelings pass. But it took a two week break from teaching to remember what home actually feels like. 

For the first time in my life, I was able to idle well. 

To me, idling is an art. And all art involves struggle. I’m not a do nothing kind of person. But something in the storm of 2020 made me desperate for idle time at home. 

I read a book, logged in hours of board games, entertained a few visitors, watched some football. And I did all this without the nagging critic in my year telling me I was wasting too much time. 

A true watermark of my growth in recovery has been my ability to be who I am without qualifier. It has been a long journey. This sort of simple self-confidence has given rise to what I call the miracle of the mundane. It allows me to approach the little things in life with the sort of awe-struck wonder that life deserves. This wonder vanishes when I lose my focus on what is in front of me. And, for a father of 3 on Christmas break, the only thing in front of me for 2 weeks straight was family. 

I have balked at this opportunity in the past. 

In recovery, for the majority of my time sober, I have thrown myself into countless creative and professional projects. This bustle of activity has helped me tremendously. It has filled my hours with productivity. But occupying my hours with incessant activity has also taken its toll. When that activity begins to slow, I have the tendency to brood, become anxious, indulge in self-pity, experience symptoms of depression. 

This break told me I am okay with the life I am leading. I can rest, knowing that when I am faced with that next ascent (or descent, depending) I will be ready for it. 

I became certain that weathering 2020 has helped me come to this conclusion. So has sobriety. 

I know peace today. 

When I was in early recovery and heard people throwing around the word serenity, I felt a knot in my stomach. I could only ascribe the word to Tibetan monks achieving Nirvana. 

Serenity isn’t my life’s pursuit. 

But because recovery has taught me what serenity feels like, I have a baseline of peace. There is a touchpad of stillness in my life that I can return to when I grow irate, fearful, insecure. And I’ve been blessed to return to it often enough, that I have developed the faith that it will always be there for me. 

No matter how chaotic the circumstances, I know peace. 

This faith, most recently, saw me through the death of a dear friend. I’ve lost plenty of people in recovery, but no one quite like Tom. While I fell apart in grief, I knew that, with help, I could collect the pieces. 

Faith felt like a gamble at first. 

And for some reason I was convinced that the stakes were fatal in nature. I almost died for refusing to believe that absolute trust exists outside of my own self-reliance. Now it seems laughable. After seeing everything that a relationship with God has done in my life, it amazes me how I could ever be so closed-minded to think that I can do it alone.

This new year, more than others, I’ve been reminded what solves my problems today. It is not God that solves problems for me. It is not I who solve my own. It is my faith. 

That blessed intermediary that stands firm in the shakiest of circumstance, in the bloodiest of wars, in the boldest of lies. 

I’ve had wonderful conversations with my students this week in the wake of a turbulent election. 

I did not lead them in a discussion. My faith did. I did not steer my students one way or another, but I validated each one.

It was incredible to see young men caring so deeply about the country. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to write that. It was an inspiration. 

And in each class I asked them to close all their additional tabs on their computers, put their phones down and close their eyes with me. I sat still and silent with them for 30 seconds. 

I can only hope that they will one day too learn the power of taking a break.