WEEKLY MEDITATION
Everything in moderation—including moderation.
-Oscar Wilde
This playful but poignant quotation is yet another reminder that balance is important in all areas of life. Living a life propelled by addiction is the very opposite of living in moderation. The need to have that to which one is addicted runs roughshod over the ability to create a balanced life, one in which moderation can be used to temper unbridled passion with conscious living. Even in recovery, where the main addiction that led to the need for a transformation has been dealt with, smaller and more acceptable addictive behaviors can begin to crop up and create the need for more self-analysis and awareness. This can, in turn, create the need to form a routine through which recovering behavior and the patterns that they require can take over for the chaotic life that pre-recovery offered. And routine, although preferable to chaos, can even become addictive in itself, as it can seem to offer an impermeable barrier through which the old habits of destructive addiction cannot penetrate. For a while this type of routine may be important as a tool through which to experience consistency and the self-discipline that it, in turn, can teach. But it is important, too, to make sure that even moderation is used in moderation, so that routine doesn’t simply become a slightly safer prison than the original addiction, still keeping us from enjoying all that a truly full life has to offer.
