What If It Could Be That Good?

Imagine you’re a kid again. Maybe seven or eight. And your parents surprise you with a trip to Disney World. It’s not til the summer and it’s only January now, so the trip seems like a lifetime away. You’re not worried about how hot it will be in Orlando or the crowds. You’re excited to see this magical place and meet some of the characters in real life you’ve watched on tv so many times.

In the early days you’re constantly thinking about the trip. And as March and April drag on, you get pulled into day-to-day rhythms of school and family life. And while Disney is still on your mind, you find yourself thinking of it less and less. Then, the couple weeks before the trip, you find something even more concerning: you’re not excited about the trip. I mean, when adults ask you, “are you excited to go to Disney World,” you chime back, “Yes,” because you know you should be excited. Heck, even a couple months ago you couldn’t wait to get there and experience the magic for yourself. But even as you say, “yes,” outside, part of you on the inside wishes you could communicate how you really feel, and wonders why you’re not more excited overall. Is something inside you broken? This is supposed to be a dream trip for you, what happened?

This post isn’t about my childhood or Disney World, but I found myself in this exact position last week. I’m writing this on the back deck of an AirBnB somewhere west of Austin, TX. Wild Turkeys gobble in the background, a cool breeze flows by carrying the remnants of moisture in the early morning air. What brings me to Austin, TX, you might ask?

The short story: I met a group of guys on The Luckiest Club (TLC), an online sobriety support group and we planned this weekend getaway together.

The longer story: We all hop on the weekly men’s meeting Friday mornings and get to here slivers of each other’s journey in three-minute increments. This is pretty magical, to hear a group of guys open up about what’s going on in their lives: the good, the bad, and everything in between. And yes, it’s about physical sobriety, but it’s also about emotional sobriety. It’s about how you live a life and come back into a deep knowing of yourself (the good, the “bad,” and everything in between) when you take away a substance that you used to use to deal with the parts of life when you wanted an escape, or when you were “celebrating.”

Last October, a big group of guys on the Friday meetings went to a men’s retreat TLC organized. We got to see in 3D these guys we’ve seen so frequently in the Zoom squares, and between cornhole, s’mores, hiking, and tossing a football around, we got to share our own sobriety story without a three-minute time limit and also get to hear everyone else’ sobriety story. I can’t convey how powerful that was, to hear a group of men who were wiling to be vulnerable with each other, and also hold space for whoever was speaking at the time. To allow him to have his feelings--joy, tears, whatever came up—without feeling the need to step in and make him feel better or “save” him from those feelings. A group of guys who was doing the emotional work to be able to sit with and feel their own feelings and allow the other guys to do the same for themselves.

And post-retreat there was a Marco Polo thread with a few of the guys that’s been running and we’ve continued on that connection from the retreat in the weekly TLC meetings and also in Polo chats. Again, sharing the highs, lows, silliness and whatever’s coming up on any random day of the week. And I feel like I can show up as myself with these guys. Like nothing’s off limits, like the struggle I’m having one week isn’t stupid, no matter how small. And, how I can celebrate a win with them, even the little ones, particularly the little ones, because I know they understand how important it is to celebrate all the wins. Sure, another day of not drinking alcohol, but beyond that, staying calm in a parenting moment when I might have previously flipped my lid, or saying something in a conversation when I would have previously kept my mouth shut for fear of what the other person would say or fear of their perception of me.

I share all this because these guys are such a huge part of my life, and we’ve had this trip to Austin planned for months. And much like the Disney thought experiment at the top, I was really excited. And then just before coming to Austin, I found myself wanting to be excited but feeling more ambivalent about the trip, which is wild if you knew the affection I have for this group.

As part of my coaching program, we do regular practice with other folks in the cohort, taking turns as client and coach in sessions. I offered to do a session as a client before my flight on Wednesday so a colleague could get a recording for an upcoming assignment we need to turn in. And as I sat in the Wichita airport, I figured this would be a perfunctory meeting to help her out and no more, and I wasn’t even sure what I would talk about.

But the ambivalence around this trip came up, and I almost pushed it away, but decided to speak it aloud. And from there we were off to the races. I shared how I couldn’t understand how I was not more excited about this trip to get away and spend time with some of my favorite people. And old stories came up about feeling bad for leaving my wife, girls, and our seven-month-old puppy. And another story came up too: scarcity. Not financial scarcity, though that’s been a part of my mental journey as well that I’m still working on. Emotional scarcity, or really joy scarcity.

A part of me holds the narrative that if I’m happy or enjoying my life, that means some people out there are not enjoying their lives as much. It’s wild to say, but it’s true. Part of the reason I stayed in a previous job longer was that I was scared of what other people would think if I made the jump to something else, and even more scared what they’d think when I decided the other thing was going to be coaching. Because though I worked with great people, I didn’t really love what I did by the end. A younger version of me took that job, and it was a great move for him, but the more recent version of me had grown and it was time for something different. But, I felt this sense of obligation, along with guilt and shame that I had the privilege to be able to leave and go after something I wanted.

Fast forward a few months, and I’m working with a client and doing practice coaching, and I love every minute of it. I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to get paid to do something I enjoy so thoroughly, and also that I shouldn’t get to enjoy going to the gym at 8am instead of 5:30am. And also that I shouldn’t get to enjoy going on a trip with a group of guys I love, because how could anyone be so lucky? And how in the world should I get to be that person?

Again, that person, as if only one person gets to be happy and joyful. Throughout that airport coaching session we explored these ideas and while I don’t necessarily have all the answers, I am a little closer to a point of acceptance that I’m not only allowed to feel joy and love my life, that my loving my life doesn’t mean you don’t have an opportunity to find your own joy and love in your life. That your vision of enjoyment might look completely different from mine, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less, and vice versa.

And when I got on the plane to Dallas and then on to Austin, the excitement was starting to come back, but it wasn’t fully there. And then once I got to Austin, saw the guys, hugged them, and settled into the joy and connection this weekend has been full of, the excitement was there in full force. And underneath the excitement was peace, gratitude, and a lot of love.

I’m tearing up as I finished that last paragraph. The connections I enjoy with these guys go deeper than I could have imagined was possible. The lack of shame, depth of love and willingness to engage all levels of conversation from sex to movies, books, an every other conceivable topic is a huge gift to my sobriety but mostly just to my life.

And this has been a longer piece than I normally write, but there’s a lot of goodness here. And I don’t have this enjoyment thing figured out yet, but I’m on my way. And the question I’m sitting with is a question one of my teachers and I ask each other: what if it could be this good? I don’t know what your life looks like right now, but what if it could be that good?