Category: Words To Live By

Did you know that November is National Gratitude Month? I didn’t, well at least not until I came into the 12 Step rooms of recovery. With that being said, I decided to honor this special month with at least one blog entry about it, especially given that I’ve struggled quite a bit with remaining grateful on many of the heavy pain-filled days I’ve gone through in recent months.

I truly believe it’s extremely important to have a grateful mind and body because it’s quite easy to get caught up in what I don’t have, versus what I do. And frankly, I have a lot to be grateful for.

First and foremost, I’m grateful for being clean and sober from all my former addictions, as without my sobriety, my life would certainly be in shambles. Beyond that, there are plenty of other things I have every reason to be grateful for, from the help my spiritual teacher continues to give me, to my partner who has stuck by my side through all the pain I’ve had to go through, for both of my sponsors in my recovery programs who have been there for me when I needed them the most, to all those out there in the world who keep on praying for my health to improve, to the fact that I still have my eyesight, my hearing, and the functionality of the majority of my body, for the abundance of food, water, clothing, and shelter that I’ve always had in life, to my sister who has constantly been there for me and never gave up believing in me, even when I did for a time, to my friend Cedric who has shared a spiritual bond with me for close to two decades, and lastly to my Higher Power who has made all this possible.

Thus I’m more than thankful for remembering that November is National Gratitude Month because without remaining grateful, I often tend to find myself drifting backward into places I no longer wish to ever go back to. This is precisely why I plan on keeping a grateful heart, as I know in doing so I will remain much healthier and much closer to my Higher Power than if I didn’t…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I had a problem recently with one of my remote controls for my Direct TV system. There was a button on it that simply stopped functioning during the middle of watching one of my DVR programs. Ironically, I did what many of us probably do when situations like this arise, I over complicated it.

The button itself I’m speaking of is a “jog” button, which allows the user to shuffle through commercials pretty quickly. At first I did what anyone would do and that’s to keep pressing the button again and again, harder and harder, thinking that might fix it. It didn’t of course. Next I changed out the batteries, even though the rest of the remote was working just fine, and of course that didn’t fix the problem either. At this point, I started to get slightly frustrated so I called Direct TV technical support for help. Thirty minutes later after they had me program, unprogram, and reprogram it over and over to no success, a new remote was ordered and acceptance of the non functioning remote became necessary.

Two days would pass before I received the replacement remote and when I did, I promptly began going through all the steps to setup every device the universal remote normally controls. When all that was said and done, I clicked on one of my saved TV programs to ensure the button was working ok on this one.  Alas, it wasn’t.

It was then I was back on the phone with Direct TV technical support once again trying to trouble shoot why this one button was now not working on two completely separate remotes. While I continued to troubleshoot with them, I decided to try the other remote from the back bedroom to see if it still worked, thinking maybe the functionality of that button was removed somehow, but it worked perfectly. I finally began to accept the fact that maybe the actual satellite box went bad somehow and that I’d need to get another one of those sent out to my home as soon as possible. But suddenly a simple thought crossed my mind.

Andrew, why don’t you try unplugging the power to the satellite box and see if it fixes the issue?

And you know what, it did, for both remotes actually.

So in the end, I realized how easy it is sometimes to over think what a solution is to some of the problems that can often arise in life. Thankfully, this situation was a great reminder of that and hopefully I won’t forget it the next time I begin thinking one of my Direct TV Remotes is “broken”. J

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.” 

“One is Evil – It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

“The other is Good – It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Taking a look back throughout my life, I can see how I often fed much of that evil wolf. In turn, I became quite dark and lived much of my life in darkness. I never felt all that good and those I surrounded myself with during all that time were a pack of many other dark wolves doing very much the same things I was.

But one day the darkness became so great within me, that I almost lost my life. I had fed that evil wolf for so long that I felt there wasn’t any reason left to live. Thankfully I was given another chance, which is when I began the long road back to feeding and becoming the good wolf again.

I see things pretty differently today because of it, and I feel I’m filled with a lot more light than dark these days, which I’m overly grateful for. So I’m truly thankful for this old Cherokee story that’s a great reminder that we really do become that which we feed ourselves.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson