There are times when it feels like no one listens. I write and teach about healthy ways to approach substance abuse, yet people continue to dig their respective holes and wonder why they can’t get out. I started blogging to reach more people in the hopes that I could impact the world in a positive way. But sometimes if feels like my words fall on deaf ears.
This last weekend, for example, I had yet another conversation with a father whose son uses heroin. When I speak with him, I feel like a broken record – I say the same things repeatedly, yet he behaves in the same ways, expecting everyone else around him to change. He stays the same, however, and then wonders why nothing ever changes. I’ve tried to explain to him that the only person he can control is the one in the mirror, but he tries and tries to force his son to behave in ways that meet the illusory expectations he has set. I’ve tried to guide the father to a place where he can find some peace, but it almost seems as though he’s just as addicted as his son and has no interest in looking at things differently.
It’s frustrating to know demonstrable facts that are often ignored. Although my books have won awards and sold somewhat well, my blog posts are often ignored. It can feel like blogging is a waste of time. Even when my posts do find an audience, I suspect that what I write doesn’t actually become knowledge. That is, even if people read what I write, it’s only information until they use it in their lives. Until then, facts and information are ethereal concepts that are rather meaningless.
Basically, I blog about something very simple, yet very effective and blogging for me is how I practice what I preach. You see, if we can frame our circumstances into terms that we understand, then reflect upon what those circumstances and terms mean for us, and then act in ways that reframe those circumstances into healthier meaning systems, then we probably will suffer less. I know, firsthand, that facing darkness, then reframing what the darkness means and acting within the reframed meaning works.
In the case of the father, I’ve tried guiding him into seeing that his son’s heroin use is the son’s karma and not his. Yet the father is so consumed by fear and shame that he simply can’t see his circumstances in any other way. Most of what he acts upon exists only in his mind, but he simply won’t look at objective reality in any other way but fearfully. So, he continues to suffer with the idea that he can force his son to change. He can’t. Really, no one can force anyone to do anything. Yet that doesn’t stop us all from trying and in the process, causing our own suffering.
I’ll continue to blog and teach because I don’t have a choice. I write because I am. It’s that simple. It’s just that I do wish that it didn’t feel like I was being ignored…..
