The Power of Love in Response to Addiction
What seems to us as bitter trials
are often blessings in disguise.
Oscar Wilde - Irish Poet
This morning, I listened to an inspiring presentation by Killian Noe, the founding director of The Recovery Café Network. She offered ideas on “Living with Hope in the Darkness of Our Time,” and her comments relate to our work with kindness as well as her work with clients who have addictions.
Recovery Cafes offer a safe place where people with addictions can go to be part of a community that accepts them as they are and offers them support on their healing journey.
Killian told a true story about Mahatma Gandhi that really spoke to me. A boy in India was addicted to sugar, and he was stealing candy and other sweets wherever he could. A friend suggested to his mother that she take him to see Gandhi. The mother and her son walked almost a whole day to reach Gandhi’s ashram.
When the mother explained to Gandhi that her son was addicted to sugar and needed his help, Gandhi asked her to come back in two weeks. She did not understand why he could not help them while they were there, but they did return two weeks later.
When Gandhi saw the boy, he said to him, “Stop eating sugar.”
The mother was surprised and a bit annoyed. She asked why he did not just say that during their first visit.
Gandhi replied, “Because two weeks ago, I had not given up sugar myself. and I could not ask anyone to do what I was not committed to myself.”
Wow! That got us thinking about the increase of addiction in our culture and the criticism and judgments around people who are addicted, especially to opioids and other drugs.
We thought about what we expect from other people that we are not committed to ourselves.
We thought about the many ways that we and others are addicted, either to substances or attitudes and behaviors that are habitual in our daily lives.
That opened a Pandora’s Box that many of us would not want to look in.
We began by asking ourselves:
What am I addicted to?
What people do I judge for their addictions?
Those questions do not apply only to physical addictions to sugar, alcohol and drugs, but also to attitudes and judgments of others whose personal choices and lifestyle are different from ours.
In our culture, most of us have some attitudinal, as well as physical addictions. We realized years ago that an attitude or tendency to judge others, over time, becomes an addition. We keep feeding it every time we see a person doing whatever it is that we do not approve of. It arises in us as an automatic response.
So, this brings us back to where we are now.
Am I willing to sit with these questions and truly look at myself?
Am I able to replace my judgments with love and kindness?
What would that look like?
At the Recovery Café, when someone with an addiction walks in the door, they are welcomed with the greeting, “You are loved. You are not abandoned.”
For the people entering that door, their addiction has brought them a blessing they had not expected – a community of people who will love them and support them, no matter what their challenges might be.
Are we able to say words of welcome to those whom we now judge or condemn for who they are or how they show up in life?
Does it matter to us to be able to do that? We each get to answer that for ourselves, in our own way.
At the very least, let’s admit to ourselves that we also have our limitations. How would we want people to respond to us, even if they knew what we know about our own shortcomings?
Can we bring love and kindness where before we brought disdain and judgment?
Sometimes, when we have chosen to live with kindness, life asks a lot from us. We all get to choose how we respond.
Our job is to offer opportunities to consider. You get to take any next step when you are ready. A kindness path does not demand anything from us. It offers us opportunities, and we each meet them in our own way.
We wish you joy and peace as you walk your kindness path.
Image by Kanenori from Pixabay
Click here to learn more about The Recovery Café Network
As always, I am moved and heartened by your outreach to learn and to be with others on their journeys to seek out and find kindness in this complex world. Your sighting this story of Ghandi and his own addiction, I can relate to the subject of encountering addiction myself right now.
I am an active participant in a re-entry program through my synagogue to assist formerly incarcerated individuals and helping them navigate back into the world that has changed for each of them upon their return. I was a mentor to a woman in her 60’s with a partner mentor to learn how we could help her communicate in a different way she never had a chance to learn: using computers, emails, Zoom groups, etc among the many other issues she was facing. In short, despite our efforts to help her keep current through these technologies or even a simple phone call, she could not regularly attend our weekly sessions in large part because of her addictive behavior. She found it too hard to change her routines that included contact with us and the 12 week program she was offered. We felt very sad for her and frustrated that we tried so hard to keep in contact with her that at a point she was not ready to accept.
And then kindness stepped in— I was able to be kind in a new way to her, forgiving that she was resistant to change right now and to feel kind to myself for leaving expectations and goals aside and just feeling her struggles. Kindness works its way into our behavior and our hearts in a variety of ways. Thanks for this opportunity to respond. You are just two spectacular people who have abundant riches – showing us how to value kindness in so many different situations!