Drama is a Choice.
14 September 2024, Daily Meditation
Ever find yourself really caught up in the gossip, or the backstory of a situation? Maybe you are not even the type to engage in such a thing, but someone drops a line or two, or you overhear a conversation, and poof! You find yourself just dying to know more. You feel your motivation is to be of help, but then you take the deep dive, immersed in the emotional content, savoring the shadow side of the situation, craving to know all the nitty details of the different angles of all the parties involved — hooked! What kind of a high is this, that pulls us off our center, and into the depths of darkness — our own and theirs?
This is what I mean by drama. It’s a form of a high, isn’t it? And it allows us to escape from ourselves. When we are pointing the eyes, fingers, heart, at someone else, for a few blessed moments, we feel we are escaping our own suffering. But at what cost?
What price do we pay? In the Alcoholics Anonymous literature, The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, there’s an uncomfortable little discussion about self-righteous anger that gets to the point: “Gossip barbed with anger, a polite form of murder by character assassination, has its satisfaction for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those we criticize, we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness.” (p.67)
Could this be true? Are we really this shallow? Taking pleasure at the hands of others?
I have to laugh at myself, because of course I have been guilty of this.
What I also know is that no amount of telling myself how “bad” this behavior is has ever freed me from my bad behaviors. Do you agree?
When I am stuck in a cycle of escaping from even more painful feelings or memories inside of myself, this is one of the defenses that my ego uses to get me to run away. I will seize upon a bright shiny object to distract myself from the issue at hand. Not pretty. But true.
Buddhist practice has begun to teach me that there are disciplines by which I can train myself to a different way. Through right behavior, I can learn to bring attention to the ways I speak act and live, slowly learning to direct these things in a manner that is in accord with what I believe to be right.
Through right effort, I can use my mind and attention, such as in meditation, to make my thoughts more stable, learning how to observe my mind.
Through right view or cognition, I can bring attention to my thinking processes and learn to correct problems in my daily life. I observe myself as I am, I correct my behavior, and I develop wisdom about myself and the world around me through ongoing practice. Over time, I begin to step out of the ways I was conditioned to be by the world I grew up in and the practices I learned in that world without consciousness.
So, when I first became sober, I was immersed in the drama of my own and others’ lives. One might say that I thrived on it. I was even a sort of vampire for it, seeking it out and drinking it in, as opposed to facing my own life. If I could seek out your problems and drink in your stories and problems, and re-tell them to others, maybe even enhancing them, I could successfully avoid facing my own problems in real life.
I had my own trauma buried deep. In fact, as a result I remained a victim of my own problems, repeating life problems and cycles over and over again. I blamed others for this, citing the terrible things people did to me, making myself blameless and taking no responsibility for my part or for my addiction.
As I gained recovery, I tried to do the same thing. People joked with me, saying I was like Pigpen from Charlie Brown comics, with a cloud of dust following me wherever I went. I laughed along, not knowing what they meant. My problems remained in my sobriety, or maybe you would call it “dryness.”
I was not taking responsibility for my own actions, so I was not getting better. I still felt suicidal and depressed, even though I wasn’t using. I was watching others and feeling envious of their recovery and doing my best to bring them down to my level, unconciously at first.
My sponsor kept asking me, “Are you done yet?”
I really didn’t know what she was talking about.
I didn’t think of myself as a gossip or a drama queen. I was only talking to my friends about our other friends. I earnestly believed this. I was trying to “help.”
I was running from my inventory and talking to my sponsor about it. When I finally faced myself, it all came tumbling down on me. I saw myself in the people I was criticizing. It was like looking in the mirror.
Years of being a victim came rising to the surface. I saw that the things I was harshest about in others were the things I didn’t want to see in myself. I felt humiliated and embarassed.
I owed a lot of amends. I felt I might not be able to show my face with some of my “friends.”
My sponsor came to the rescue — she assured me that if I got honest with myself and began to be humble about how hard it was for me to face myself, that my friends would understand. She stressed how hard it had been for her to get honest, and that true honesty, with self and our higher power, was the point of the program.
I realized that I suffered from deep self-loathing. I was afraid if you knew me as I really was, you wouldn’t want to know me. The drama and the gossip was a deep cover.
It was then I was able to give it up. I wouldn’t want you to treat me, the way I was treating you. It took a long time to change those early behaviors, and of course, other layers came after. Each layer gave me courage to face the next, and still that growth continues.
This is what’s meant by the Buddhist concept of right action. It’s not a morality that comes from a law outside. It’s a feeling that comes from within your heart when you finally get right with yourself. When your insides match your outsides.
We use mindfulness to develop the powers of observation, in order to become more honest with ourselves.
There are many paths to this place.
I hope you find your own.
Namaste!
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