Category: Words To Live By

A few nights ago I went out to dinner after an AA meeting with a couple of friends. Another person from that meeting also joined us and ended up sitting next to me. I listened intently to him throughout the evening as he spoke of a lonely life he was living every day, which was greatly reminiscent of how I once felt.

He talked of how he’s spent the past six years being single during which he resorted to occasional quick hook ups and watching pornographic material on the Internet to deal with his loneliness. Upon hearing this, I shared with him about all the same unhealthy things I did to keep myself from feeling those very same emotions and how it destroyed my mind, body, and soul in doing so. I mentioned specifically about my affairs with married and partnered men, and the damage those relationships did to me, and all he could say was that he wished he could have those same experiences because something was better than nothing.

When I asked if he’d be willing to go through a period of sexual refrain so that he could work on loving, healing, and embracing himself a little more, he indicated he felt he had done enough through his state of being single for so many years. What’s ironic about that statement is that it’s one I used to say quite often to myself. For many years, I too was single and felt that being in that state was enough for me to learn to love myself. But during that time, I never totally faced being fully alone and instead occupied most of it with watching porn, chasing after unavailable and unhealthy people, and living in other addiction based behaviors.

I’m firmly convinced today that it is inherent to have a good capacity of love for oneself before any successful long-term intimate relationship can ever develop. To put it in another way, how could I ever have loved anyone else unconditionally, if I couldn’t look in the mirror on any given day and say I truly loved myself?

During all those years where I refused to work on finding that love for myself, I brought all sorts of people into my life that were just like me who didn’t love themselves either. Each and every one of those relationships was a just a mirror for myself to see more clearly who I really was inside. So when I was with dominant, controlling, and abusive men, it’s because I was also the same. And when I was with mentally and emotionally imbalanced as well as codependent men, it’s because that was I as well. Until I began spending that quality time with me and only me, I continued to find other broken men who forced me to see those areas of my life that needed to be healed the most, or I kept myself numb with various addictions such as watching porn.

After a period of celibacy and spending a lot of time alone to get to know myself much better, the healing of those broken parts within me began occurring and my love for myself started growing much greater. It was then that God saw fit to bring into my life a partner who was much healthier than just about everyone else I’ve ever been in a relationship with. While my partner does still mirror parts of me that I need to continue to work on, our relationship is not toxic like all my previous ones were. And I think it’s important to note that those previous ones were only toxic because I was, but without consciously knowing that, I sought others that were just like me to teach me that lesson.

It’s my hope and prayer that the man I had dinner with the other night, who could have been a snapshot of me several years ago, will take the time to work on loving himself a little more than he currently does. Until then, sadly, he’ll most likely stay in those same toxic patterns where his loneliness will continue to persist.

While I do still deal with loneliness, it’s not because of how I’m living my life anymore. It’s not because I don’t love myself enough. And it’s not because I’ve surrounded myself with toxic relationships and addictions. It’s only because I long for a closer relationship with God and it’s my daily prayer that it develops more and more as I continue to work on loving and healing myself daily.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Don’t you just hate it when you are driving along a road and are talking on your cell phone when suddenly your connection gets distorted and full of static? Even worse, doesn’t it just stink when the call just outright drops? In both cases, the culprit is usually that the person has driven into an area where there isn’t a cellular tower nearby to keep the clarity or the call active.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the symbolism of this to my relationship with God. I fully believe that I was born directly under God’s cellular tower where I had a completely full signal and was carrying on clear communication with God. But as I grew older, and began to use my free will, my decisions drove me farther and farther away from that tower. So for each time I got drunk, or high, or promiscuous, or treated people poorly, it was almost as if I was traveling towards some part of the world which couldn’t be reached by God’s cellular tower. The more I did any of my selfish things in life, the more bars I lost, which did nothing more than add distortion to my conversation with God. Eventually, after doing enough selfish things for way too long, I completely lost my signal and all those bars, and my conversation with God dropped completely. It was then that I landed in the mental hospital where I found myself in total disbelief and wondering how I got there.

The funny thing about cell phones is that no matter whether the model is very old or relatively new, their ability to get a strong signal with those towers is very dependent on maintaining the current software updates within each of them. The same holds true for me. My software is programmed into my mind, body, and soul and the more I work on making them healthier , the better my connection is to God’s cellular tower. The less that I’ve worked on any of them, the more I’ve seen my conversations with God get garbled and come close to dropping altogether.

Another important thing to understand is that cell phone towers don’t reach every single inch of the globe. There are some areas which are considered dead zones and I’ve driven into many of them. I think God’s cellular tower is no different. There are some places that people can go where it becomes very hard for God to reach us. And I’ve been taking many actions now to get out of those dead zones and back into the areas where I have a much better reception with God.

There are many competing cellular companies who say they have the best signal and the most coverage. But that coverage is always dependent on maintaining those software updates and being in close proximity to their towers. For me, God is the largest cellular carrier who has one very strong tower for each of us to communicate with. I failed for many years to keep updating my software to connect with it and I often traveled into those areas where I couldn’t maintain a signal to it. Today I am making every effort to stay on top of those updates and am doing everything I can now to return to being directly below that tower. It’s there where I know my conversation with God will be the most clear, even more so than that pin drop you might hear over on the Sprint network.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

If you knew that you had one day left to live in life, how would you spend it?

Have you ever pondered this question? I know I have. Life is already too short, but I’ve tried to imagine if I suddenly knew I only had 24 hours left to live, how would I use the precious moments that remained?

There are infiniteness answers to this question and for each individual that may be posed it, they would vary. Some might party like it’s 1999 as Prince once said. Others might cry profusely and spend their last moments being depressed and alone. Then there’s those who might spend a ton of money and buy lavish things or travel to an exotic locale. There’s also those who might call all their close friends and family and tell them how much their loved. And of course there may even be some who might seek forgiveness from all all those they had hurt throughout their lives, before it becomes too late. Those are just some of all the possible paths that people might follow in their final moments alive on Earth.

While I’m not sure I know what I’d exactly do in my last hours of life if I knew I was in them, I can say for sure I know what I wouldn’t do. I’ve had many people ask me if I would ever consider breaking my sobriety if I knew I was going to die imminently. My answer to them then and now is still the same; no. Why would I want to spend my final remaining moments being numb when I’ve worked so hard in my life to go in the exact opposite direction. I can also say that I probably wouldn’t go spend a ton of money either because that never brought me much happiness in any point of my life. But if I really was to make a serious gander at what I would want to do in the final day of my life, I have a pretty good idea of what it could be only because I believe I’m already doing it.

Today, I try to look at every day, ever hour, every minute, and every second, as if it were my final moments to live. Because of that, I tell those I care about, that I love them every single time I part company or hang up the phone at the end of a conversation with them. I do my best to be selfless and giving, and also kind and considerate to any person I come across. I really work hard to remain free of judgment of things I see around me that my ego doesn’t like. I ask for forgiveness when I make mistakes because I still do make them at times. And I strive to free myself of all anger and resentments towards everyone and everything because both are poison to my soul. All of this is different from how I used to be as for the longest time in my life, I was extremely selfish and self-centered. I hurt people because I was hurt. I sought after misery and created even more of it, in and around me. So when I lost people, like my parents, to sudden deaths and was left to ponder my final moments with them, the memories that I was left with were usually of me fighting or arguing with them or being completely caught up in my selfishness. I lived with much regret for the longest of time over this until I finally made a promise to myself that I was going to do everything I could to becoming healthier, more loving, and totally devoted to God.

Through all that hard work, I really do take each day now as if it could be the last for either myself or anyone else that I may come across. If it really was going to be mine or someone else’s final day, the last thing I would want to do is fill it with anything else but light and love. So the next time you might find yourself in an argument with someone, ask yourself what if this was your’s or their’s last day alive? Would that fight you’re having be worth it then? I know what my answer would be.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson