When I got home last night I was coming home from another sober day. I accomplished many of my daily goals that I had written to do on my calender but in this regard it was not a perfect day. However, it was a good day and this is what I wrote at the end of it:
Although there were definite areas in need of improvement, I claim today to be a successful day. Perhaps categorizing the day as pass or fail misses the mark. The point in a pass/fail grade is to push the student along without further examination. But isn’t this is what is needed: further examination? To consider that I had a lot of successes today may be a better way to look at it. However, even if I were to give the day a pass/fail mark based on a success or failure of staying morally clean, would be too pass to dismal a judgment on things.
For instance, what if I did nothing productive today at all, just lay in bed and watched movies, yet I stayed morally clean from pornography. Maybe I just watched Polyanna over and over and over again. Would this be a successful day then? If I judged my success solely on the fact that I abstained from sexual sin then the day would have been a success. However, I don’t usually think in these terms, nor is it healthy to. Even if I have just made large mistakes in the recent past (which I have), if I remained sober for any period of time thereafter, yet didn’t accomplish anything else, I would have wasted my precious time. And I should be hard pressed to call this a true victory (although we can always be happy with immediate sobriety).
However, something peculiar happens when you look at it from the other side. But when it comes to failures, in the past, I’ve had no problem calling my whole day a loss if I fail to overcome sexual temptation, yet I accomplish a great deal. This logic reeks of partiality and it defeats the whole process of eternal progression. For example:
Let’s say that for two days I do nothing but watch TV, play video games, and surf the net, yet I do not partake in pornography. I may delude myself and call these two days a victory, especially if I had just repented from coming off a bender. However, eternal progression is more concerned with where I’m headed than where I’ve been. And the truth is that I am setting myself up for a massive failure, once again, if I think that cleanliness is akin to godliness. There is much more to the process of life and the process of healing than simply avoidance. It is to choose the good. And history tells me that if all I do is “hide” then I am ripe for a relapse. So those two days of abstaining and doing nothing else but avoiding the hard work of repair, reflection, and education will come back to haunt me with a vengeance. There is no salvation in laying low. It is like the parable of the talents. Just because I’m afraid to sin and mess up is no reason to stop living and learning; there must always be effort.
So these were my thoughts from last night. It is true that we can and should always be celebratory in our approach to sobriety but to live for nothing else is to be so focused on avoiding pornography that we become solely focused on … pornography (anyway).
There is so much that I must learn but there is so much that I have learned as I’ve constantly fought to stand up once I get knocked down. It is important to focus on the good. The past does not stand in front of us, so don’t let its shadow or illusion get in your way. Neither let it weigh you down.
There is much to do. Until next time.
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