For many years of my life I felt like Derek Zoolander did in this clip. It wasn’t because I thought I was incredibly good-looking or because I knew how to shake my stuff down a catwalk. No, I felt like this character because I had no idea who I really was. Many a night I stared at the mirror asking the same question he posed in this clip “Who am I?” Inevitably I always got the same response. “I don’t know”….
Today I feel differently. After years of soul searching, a treatment stint and some much needed humbling, I’ve begun to get a much better grip on who I am. I know what makes me tick, I know what I believe in, what I stand for, what I can and cannot do, what I’m good at and what I’m not so good at. Because of this emerging knowledge of who I am, I believe that I’ve become better at making the right decisions, finding more effective ways to cope with stress and have become more self-aware.
The more and more I think about these last four drug free years and all that I’ve learned, the more I realize that living a life of “recovery” is really not ALL about abstaining from drugs and alcohol. Certainly that’s a piece of the pie, but this new life is really a journey to a deeper understanding of who I really am.
For me I can sum up recovery in these 7 statements.
- Recovery is understanding yourself so completely that good decisions become natural.
- Recovery is about facing down your fears so that they no longer control you.
- Recovery is overcoming your past and learning to live in the here and now.
- Recovery is coming to realize what twists you up inside & learning positive ways to avoid them.
- Recovery is finding an inner peace that no person, problem or predicament can take away.
- Recovery is learning to not try and change other people, but accepting people where they are.
- Recovery is learning that “surrender” is not a sign of defeat but the first step towards freedom.
These statements sounds pretty good huh? Sounds like goals we should all strive to achieve. So if these are definitions of recovery that we should all ty and obtain then wouldn’t it make sense to say that we all need to be in recovery? And what would the world look like if we did all live this free life? Free from fear, not drug down by our past, but carrying with us wisdom to know ourselves full well?
What kind of change could we see?
Would there be less violence?
Would people stay married?
Would kids grow up less judgmental?
I don’t know the answer to all these questions, but I do think the more we as humans take the time to understand who we really are the better off we all will be.
The truth is we are all a little crazy, slightly jacked up and in need of recovery from something. Your plight might not be as publically shaming as mine, but you’ve got your pain, your baggage, your guilt. And you also have the chance to recover, which is gift we all deserve.
Recovery is about taking the steps necessary to understand ourselves deeply and intimately. Finding out what makes us tick and discovering how to live freely.
Throughout life we will be all posed with the question Mr. Zoolander faced that fateful night.
“Who Am I?”
I pray your answer is…. “I am recovered”.