WEEKLY MEDITATION
Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly
-Paulo Coelho
One useful way of looking at a life lived within the confines of active addiction is that it is a life lived badly. While everybody has some addictive patterns—they are a part of the healthy human experience—there comes a time when our attachment to them necessarily pulls us away from the possibility of living life consciously, to life’s fullest. Sometimes this is very obvious to us and to all who know us, sometimes it is more subtle and up to us to be aware of and admit these patterns to ourselves. But, arguably, we only live once, and the motivation to live this one life well can be used as a useful fact to motivate us to face and rid ourselves of any addictions that distract us from living up to a definition of life that satisfies us. And while a satisfactory level of functioning is going to be defined differently for each of us, and the nuances of this definition are up to us to figure out, we should be aware and honest with ourselves about whether we define ourselves as living well, never allowing ourselves the dubious luxury of living poorly.
