Bumpy Roads Ahead

Habili-blog 10/15/18
“Bumpy roads ahead”
by Jared Mayes

A speed bump is a device built into a roadway designed to slow an individual down.

They are completely harmless to a vehicle if properly driven over and quite possibly could deter an accident. The same is true with adversity faced in our lives. There will always be bumps in the road. If there wasn’t we would all be moving at unsafe speeds and potentially finding ourselves amongst a great deal of emotional or physical wreckage. Remember what it was like at 16 years old with that heavy foot? Learning to drive for the first time and inevitably bottoming out from taking the speed bumps too fast? Well over the years hopefully you learned to slow down and avoid monthly trips to the mechanic to get your vehicle realigned.

Let’s face it. Most of us are emotionally weak.

Somewhere along the line we picked up defense mechanisms to get past the adversity brought upon us by life. We created cop-outs that we used to explain why we are the way we are and validate our behaviors. Drug addicts are well practiced bull shitters. The main person we try to trick is ourselves. I could have literally found a reason to cosign on any idea or behavior that popped into my head. How many of us told ourselves, “Today is the day that I will never use drugs again?” I’m the guy who whether I found a penny heads up on the ground or I broke a nail it would be some supernatural sign that I could go one more day living in the perma-hell I created for myself.

Emotional strength comes a lot from rationality.

Rational thinkers can look at a situation presented in front of them, come up with a plan to overcome it, and carry out that plan. Just like learning to drive, no one is good at this overnight. It takes some practice; some uncomfortable situations. The tricky part with drug addicts is that we often hold a one-way ticket to an alternate reality in our pocket. We choose to skip the whole uncomfortable part and go straight to avoidance.

There’s always that guy in the parking lot who is too good to drive over the speed bumps. He chooses to go around them, weaving in and out of parking stalls, avoiding the bumps all together. Although this may be better for his vehicle, it’s not the “right way.” He never actually get over the bump. I spent too many years of my life either going pedal to the medal and recklessly driving my life or simply avoiding the problems that entered my life’s roadway. Today when adversity comes my way I refuse to put myself in danger and I refuse to avoid my problems.

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that life isn’t a perfectly paved straightaway.

There will always be potholes, speed bumps and other obstacles presented before us. It’s all about how you react to scenarios and coming up with the best possible route to safely overcome the problem. That is emotional strength at it’s finest. Being able to realize that our first reactions are usually quite irrational and are either dangerous or evasive.

Sobriety is a speed bump that many see instead as a spike strip that will stop us dead in our tracks. This perception has caused many to speed up and proceed to shred their tires and ride on rims until they’re ultimately unable to go any further. Most though completely avoid the daunting task all together thus never addressing the issues that presented the problem in the first place. Once you have put in the footwork and planned your route to navigate your way through rehabilitation, addiction become much less of a spike strip and more of just a bump in the road on your journey of life.