One of the unexpected “benefits”—or perhaps “penalties”—of taking a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself is discovering memories I thought I had long forgotten. Sometimes those memories reach all the way back to childhood. Today, I found myself remembering a time when I was very young, perhaps seven or eight years old. But this wasn't simply a recollection of events. As the memories surfaced, I found myself reliving the emotions I had experienced as that little boy. I remember being terribly lonely. I spent much of my playtime, both at home and at school, by myself. School was especially difficult. I was often bullied by my classmates, and I hated going there! Somewhere along the way, I found a way to cope with that loneliness. I created two invisible friends. They were both girls my own age. They were actually my cousins, although I didn't think of them as cousins in my imagination. They were simply my best friends. And they accompanied me everywhere! I can ...
This morning, while meditating, I recalled something I said yesterday about a film my wife was watching. I had commented that the lead actor’s performance wasn’t very good. As I thought about that remark, a deeper question came to mind: What makes someone a bad actor? Perhaps we don’t believe they are the person they’re supposed to be. Their emotions seem unconvincing. Their responses don’t feel natural. Perhaps the script has poorly defined the character—or the actor was simply the wrong choice for the role. Then I turned the question toward myself: Am I a bad actor in the portrayal of my own life? Who is writing my script? Am I living my own story, or following someone else’s version of who I should be? In the story of my life, what character am I trying to portray? How do I think I’m supposed to act? Looking through the lens of recovery, I can see many times when I adopted a persona that someone else expected of me—or imposed u...