WEEKLY MEDITATION
To begin, begin.
-William Wordsworth
Addictions represent an established pattern. Of course they aren’t simple benign patterns, they are patterns that have become deeply established through a combination of emotional attachment, repetition, and time. One way or another, recovery is established when we learn to successfully break this existing pattern. Obviously this is more difficult than it sounds. For one pattern to end, another must begin. But regardless of the therapeutic path we choose to address our addiction problems, the important thing is that we begin! In the initial stages of recovery, the most pressing problem is to avoid falling back into our addictive patterns. Luckily, the very attachment to established patterns that makes breaking our addictions so difficult is also the principle that eventually can make recovery easier. Because once healthy patterns have been created, and once these healthier patterns result in our consciously building a life worth fighting for, these new patterns can also become hard to break. But we don’t need to wait for permission from our addictions, we don’t need to wait for the internal motivation to establish new patterns—we simply need to begin.
