Category: Words To Live By

These entries focus on spiritual ways of looking at things I may come across in life each and every day.

The Ups and Downs of a Sports Fan

It seems a long time ago when my life had a large amount of it revolve around certain pro sports teams. Living in the New England area, it’s hard to exist as a non sports buff. On some level, everyone here seems to wear around a type of paraphernalia favoring one of the local teams. I will admit that I do have a few articles of sports based clothing that place me here in this area.There is a major difference though with me and most people I meet here when it comes to sports. I don’t follow any of the local pro teams nor any of the other ones outside this area. There was a time I did though.

If you live in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine or Vermont, your bound to be a loyal devotee of one of the New England based pro sports teams which include the Boston Celtics ( NBA ), the New England Patriots ( NFL ), the Boston Bruins ( NHL ), and the Boston Red Sox ( MLB ). I grew up in New York though and for most of the younger years of my life I followed two local teams, the New York Mets ( MLB ) and the Buffalo Bills ( NFL ), and one other team, the Chicago Bulls ( NBA ). If a game was on with one of those teams, there was a strong likelihood that I was watching it, face glued to the television. If my team won, I was so happy. If my team lost, I was miserable and criticizing the players or the coaches. And then there were the debates I got into with people about how “my team” was better then “their team”.

All of this shifted in my life just past my college years when I lost my father and then my mother both tragically. During those years of grief, I sought healing through several things but one that specifically changed my whole level of interest in life. When I discovered meditation, my life changed dramatically. It was at a silent retreat that I had gone on for ten days that I was given a crash course in meditation.

During that retreat, all the creature comforts of life were removed and I spent ten complete days in silence meditating, walking, and reflecting. There is no media on any level and no writing instruments either. It’s just myself and my thoughts. That’s when I realized how I was on hyper speed in most of my life every single day and how I spun myself up and down based upon so many external things.

When I emerged from the retreat, my eyes were focused differently on life. While everyone and everything seemed to be on a freeway racing at top speeds, I was at a snail’s pace. That’s when I really started to see how I was allowing things outside of me influence how I felt every single day.

Why did I get so bent out of shape when one of the teams I liked lost? Why was I so hyper when one of my teams was winning? Why was I so angry and irritable at life and people around me when my team was doing poorly? Why did I treat everyone around me so much nicer when my team was in first place? Meditating helped me to go deeper with these questions and find some answers.

I wasn’t connected in ANY way to ANY professional athlete on ANY team. Yet I based a large portion of my life around those things and my life reflected it depending on how each was doing. I bragged about how great my team was to others, especially to fans of opposing teams, and I got into arguments to those same people just trying to defend something I wasn’t even connected to.

Upon moving to the New England area, I immediately felt different than most people here. There really are a vast amount of avid fans here of the local pro sports teams, especially the New England Patriots. A few years ago, they went 16-0 and then lost in the superbowl in the final minutes to the New York Giants. I swear you could have heard a pin drop in every house, on every street, throughout all of New England when that happened. And then the next day, it was the most called in sick day that whole year. No one was on the roads, as if it was Christmas Day. A few years later, the same thing happened again in the Superbowl, to the same team, in the last few minutes. And once again, life shut down for another day and everyone seemed angry and irritable. On the news they show people near the stadiums destroying property, shooting guns, getting in fights, and more whether the teams have won or lost.

I’m not sure why I ever was so deeply invested in any team. Maybe it gave me something to believe in. Maybe it was an escape. Maybe it was just something to do. Whatever the reason, it’s not me anymore. I’m not following any team or any player or any sport anymore and interestingly enough, I’m a much calmer person in my life. I’m concerned more today about reaching out and helping others and focusing in on people that are suffering and how I might be of assistance. The other night when the Patriots were playing the Ravens (and lost) I was at a Detox speaking to alcoholics and addicts that were needing help. To me it was a no brainer of where I wanted to be that night. To others that I called and asked if they wanted to join me, I was told I was crazy for wanting to miss “the big game”.

My truth is that I don’t want to feel anxious and jittery anymore and that happened a lot when watching a game. I don’t wish to subject myself to the highs and lows that come throughout the minutes I glue myself to a television during a sports season. I’ve dealt with enough anxiety and depression in my life that I don’t need to enhance it by tying myself so closely into the life of a pro sports team.

The biggest pro sporting event in the country is coming up in two weeks. The Superbowl. Will I watch it? Yes. But not for the reason one may think. I like the commercials and the halftime show. If I could string that all together for 60 minutes of viewing and remove the game, that would be a great hour spent for me.

I really am not on a roller coaster anymore of ups and downs and don’t plan on being again in this life. I like being a much calmer person throughout the day and I know that I wasn’t when I invested hours of my life each week cheering a team on. I’m happy for the athletes if that’s where their passion is. I pray for the best in each of them, their teams, as well as for their safety. That’s about the extent of connection I have anymore to sports. I like feeling more at peace and I’m grateful that meditation helped me to look at my life a little deeper to see what things kept me from getting centered and balanced, being an ups and downs kind of sports fan was just one of them.

Peace, love, light and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

To Tell or Not To Tell the Truth, That Is The Question

I have watched lately with great sadness about the demise of Lance Armstrong. Lance finally came clean with the world through his interview with Oprah Winfrey about his drug use and cover-up of it.

For years the public has watched the media report on the accusations of Lance’s drug use. Teammates, commissions, panels, doctors, and more continued to state Lance Armstrong was using drugs and earned all his wins because of it. And the world waited with bated breath each time there was an accusation only to find out each time that there was no proof. Lawsuits, counter-lawsuits, denials, and more denials. 

Ironically, I never was into cycling until I saw Lance win his first Tour De France. It was such a big thing because Americans never seemed to win the Tour De France with the exception of Greg Le Mond. But then there was Lance who won once, then twice, and then again, and again and again until he had garnered seven titles.

To watch bicyclists on television race in a foreign country seemed rather boring to me for most of my life prior to Lance Armstrong. But he became an inspiration to me with having battled cancer and then winning year after year at a race that Americans rarely won or even placed in the top three.

The news continues to report on how Lance Armstrong let the world down and how people are very angry and hurt because of his lies. I don’t feel that way.

Lance is still an inspiration to me. Why? Because he finally told the truth.

Until the last few years of my life, where I have made a stand to be honest, open-minded, and in integrity with all my thoughts, words, and actions, there were many times I lied. It was just several years ago that lies were commonplace for me. A lie is such that if one gets away with it, it becomes easier to lie again and more difficult to be honest about the truth. And when one lies enough, it’s easy to begin to even believe one’s own lies. That was me. And for the really big lies, that affected many people, the last thing that I ever wanted was to be exposed as a fraud.

I’m not sure when Lance first lied about his drug use. But I’m positive that after his fame started spreading, that when his dream to spread hope to other cancer patients and survivors expanded, and where children everywhere had begun cycling to aspire to become him, that it became next to impossible to tell the truth.

Lies are like poison within our bodies, minds, and souls. They eat away within us and tear away at the very fragment of our existence. I give Lance a lot of credit for going as long as he did with the lying. I’m sure that everyday the news reported on someone publicly announcing that Lance was using drugs, it gnawed at his soul.

What would you do if you were famous and the whole world had changed on some level to now loving a sport that once wasn’t so popular, to how cancer patients now had more hope, to how people in general began having the “little engine that could” syndrome? The argument is that he never should have lied from the beginning. In fact most would say he never should have done any drugs in the first place as well.

Hindsight is 20/20 or so the saying goes. The point is that he lied and he got away with it, for a very long time and the world changed for the better with his lies. And now the world seems to be hurting with the truth.

This brings me back to my point of why Lance is still an inspiration to me. He told the truth and placed his whole life on the line. He brought to the surface all the cover-ups and admitted his drug use.

Lance has been stripped of everything because of telling the truth. He’s lost his titles, he’s lost his golden boy status of fame, and he probably will lose a lot of money before all this is said and done between the sponsors dropping him and lawsuits. But he told the truth knowing this was all going to happen.

That takes a lot of strength to do. Lance can now heal. Truly heal. Spiritually. The poison can leave him now. And he can move on in his life and be an inspiration to others on a different level. What is that inspiration? Well the main one would be telling the truth and being honest. Another would be not taking drugs to excel in a sport. But more importantly, Lance doesn’t have cancer and millions of people still do. He can still provide hope to others through honesty about where his demons took him and how he rose above that and healed not only physically from the cancer but also mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Lance if somehow you should ever read this. I’m proud of you. It takes a tremendous amount of spiritual strength to do what you did. While the news may report on how so many look disapprovingly on you, know that one still finds you to be an inspiration.

Peace, Love, Light, and Joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Intimacy? (In-To-Me-See?)

This has been the topic as of late for me. I saw this word once in an AA conference broken down like this and it got me to thinking about my life. Intimacy is a funny thing in that many people, including myself for a very long time, when hearing the word, think sex.

Ironically what I have learned over time is that intimacy is something altogether different and is present in not only romantic relationships, but also friendships too. And something that has surfaced recently with me is the fear and trust issues that arise when someone is “in to me see”.

From the time that I was very young and dealt with my alcoholic and mentally ill parents, there wasn’t intimacy between us. The intimacy I envision might be present in a healthy family with parents and their children is sitting down with them and showing them interest in their homework, their personal lives, loving them even when they fail, and lifting them up when they are down, and most importantly, just letting them know in general that they are proud of them just as they are.

That doesn’t happen in an alcoholic family. Sadly the children of alcoholics often are abused and made to feel they aren’t worthy of love and that they aren’t good enough. My sister and I experienced just that.

So I never experienced intimacy with my Mom or Dad and had to find someone else to have that connection with.

Who I found was the diving coach on my swim team. He liked me a lot. He showed me a lot of interest. He praised me. He told me lots of nice things……and…..he molested me after all that. That was at 12 years old, with a 40’s something year old man.

In the first 17 years of my life that’s all I was to experience was not feeling good enough in my own family, and being sexually molested by someone I thought was a friend. And because I did not get therapy and counseling around any of this, I went into my adulthood finding friends and partners who repeated this cycle.

I didn’t know what intimacy was. I didn’t know I deserved love for who I was not for what I could offer or do. With my parents I had conditional based love. I had to do many things to even get them to praise me and even then, it never felt satisfactory to them. And with that diving coach who I thought was my friend, I gave up a part of my physical self.

Until just last year, I lived year after year with friendships and romantic relationships with people that used me, abused me, took advantage of me, dominated me sexually, and commented on how many things I still had to change to be “normal”.

Rarely if ever did I hear the words that I was good enough for any of them. Rarely did I ever hear that someone liked me just because I seemed like I had a good heart. And when I did hear those words from someone, guess what I did? I ran the other way. Why? Because I spent more than 20 years of my life not believing that I was worth anything to anyone unless I gave a part of myself away. When someone truly liked me for me and wanted to be with me just because of my heart and soul, I didn’t trust it genuinely. I was so used to being used and taken advantage of that I thought there had to be angle. There had to be something that someone wanted from me.

John (from The Mirror In My Face posting) was a perfect example of that. He told me he just liked me for me, that he loved me for me. And I’d try to work through those old tapes and those old fears, and walk through that uncomfortability and open a part of me up that I hadn’t and what I got was guilt trips, and sexual advances, and how he wanted this or that with me on a romantic level. All I was wanting was a friend to like me for me and not want a single thing more from me. He was just one of so many that I allowed to continue to come into my life and reaffirm what I had gone through as a child.

In the past 9 months I have removed all of those people that bring me back to my childhood. I have removed all of those toxic, unloving, self-seeking, conditional based love people. I don’t need them. I never did. God has blessed my life with a wonderful partner today who loves me for me. I use the saying “warts and all” even though at the present moment of me writing this, I don’t have any warts. I’m not sexual right now in my life and my partner doesn’t mind. He loves my heart and my soul. He loves our friendship. And he’s ok with what I offer. I also have a true friend that has been in my life for over 15 years. Over the years he has truly shown his unconditional love for me as a friend. I’m grateful for that.

As I continue to walk through the fear and let people get closer to me today, I have more of a sixth sense now to those that have a hidden agenda. I have more of a knowing of those who aren’t healthy for me. Being around my partner or my best friend and a few others in my life who have God at the center of their lives and are not living for what they can get from others has helped me go down a better path.

It’s definitely scary for me today being close to my partner or my best friend. They are “in to me see”?! And they aren’t into me for my body, for money, for possessions, or for a relationship that they think they deserve or have to have. They are in my life because they genuinely love my soul and can be near me without needing anything more. They appreciate the time I spend with them even if its just for a few moments here and there. And they love me even when I let them down or do something that may not be in the best that I could be.

Intimacy is so much more than sex. Intimacy is so much more than what happens in a bedroom. Intimacy is loving someone without conditions. Intimacy is accepting someone just as they are. Intimacy is appreciating someone just because they exist.

It has always been foreign to me to be close to anyone. With no knowledge of someone liking me just because and with having always had people telling me I wasn’t good enough or self-seeking something off of me, intimacy and intimate based connections scared me.

The more that I walk through that fear, the more I stay away from those people that reaffirmed the old tapes, and the more that I spend time with those that love me just as I am, I find that I can be intimate and receive intimacy. I’m happy to say that God truly has helped me in developing this belief.

Peace, Love, Light, and Joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson