Toil

“God has pitted you against a rough antagonist that you may be a conqueror, and this cannot be without toil.”  Epictetus

I have never cared much for toil, but I have finally learned that it beats the alternative.

Toil means accepting what I do wrong and making honest apologies (worth the work but it does get easier every time), recognizing and dealing with resentments, deliberately sitting down to think through tough situations and then making difficult decisions, and perhaps most importantly it means fighting with positive thoughts the plague of negative thoughts that race around the inside of my skull.  I have a powerful imagination, and it quite often takes on a nightmarish life on its own.  The disasters that I image hardly ever come true despite the fact that they seem so real while I am entertaining them.  Toil means fighting against the mental current and shutting off the negativity by combatting it with more realistic and optimistic ones.  Maybe I will die sad and alone, but it is more likely that I will die surrounded by friends and family. Maybe I will have a heart attack later this afternoon, but it’s unlikely as I am in pretty good health. Maybe I will start to drink again, become hopeless and homeless, and die a miserable hobo; or maybe I will continue to stay sober today, and help others stay sober today, and quit worrying about tomorrow and the day after etc.   (My imagination is most adept at merging death and self pity into wonderful, energy depriving scenes.)  Today’s toil is enough, today’s sobriety is enough, today’s rough antagonists are enough.

The alternative to doing this work?  Living in the shadow of a pessimistic imagination with all its works and pomps, cowering in fear at what MAY happen, burning energy on anxiety and unhappiness for things that will likely never occur.