Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditation April 1st

Each Day a New Beginning

To be wildly enthusiastic, or deadly serious--both are wrong. Both pass. One must keep ever present a sense of humor.
—Katherine Mansfield

How familiar wild enthusiasm and deadly seriousness are to most of us. We experience life within the extremes. The thrill of wild enthusiasm we try to trap, to control. We are exhilarated and feel good. Our serious side traps us, controls us, lowers a pall on all our activities. Both expressions keep us stuck. Neither expression allows the freedom of spontaneity so necessary to a full, healthy life.

Through our addiction - the liquor, the upper, the person, the food--we were searching for a feeling we didn't feel. We were searching for an unnatural state of happiness, even perhaps wild enthusiasm, because we had so little of any enthusiasm for life. Our search failed. Again and again we'd "catch it," only to have it elude us.

We may not have given up the search. But we will come to accept both states of mind as temporary and search instead for the middle ground. A sense of humor will make all of life's loads easier to bear. A sense of humor will offer us the balance that has been missing for so many years.

Today will offer me a chance to be wildly enthusiastic and a chance to be deadly serious. I'll try to focus on the middle ground and cultivate my sense of humor.

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To be a compulsive overeater is to be extreme.  Doing anything 'in moderation' does not come naturally to me.  I tend to think in black & white...........and a happy, peaceful life exists in the gray area.

When I began overeating, way back when, I did so to soothe and calm myself. To block out the real world and to stop feeling in general.  It took a certain amount of food to get me to that state of mind.  As time progressed, it took more & more food to keep me from feeling.  What started out as a small amount of excess food (or booze) turned into a tremendous amount.  And still, the feeling I sought was elusive.

Addiction is a disease of progression.  What starts out as a bit turns into a bottomless pit of excess.

And still the feelings we seek do not come.

No matter how much I eat or drink, it will never be enough.  So why get started down that road to begin with?

For today, it will suffice to just Be; it is not necessary to feel wildly passionate, totally thrilled, or completely depressed.  For today, I will live in the Gray and be satisfied to do so.