Getting quiet and moving our gaze inward
11th November 2021
My dad looked like James Bond when he was in his prime. He had jet black hair, piercing blue eyes and was thin and willowy. All women loved him and he wanted nothing more than to feel that adulation. My dad’s inner life was also riddled with insecurity, fear and a deep sense of not being good enough. He drunk to drown those feelings.
His drinking was sporadic and cyclical rather than a daily occurrence but the negative emotions behind the drinking were all pervasive and destroyed anything good that existed in his life, including his relationship with my mum. They split up by the time I was ten, after numerous affairs and after my mum had enough of going to find him strewn across dirty alley ways.
At some point just before they split he started going to 12 step AA meetings. Sporadically at first but by the end it became part of who he was. Every fiver of his being wanted to attend those daily early evening sessions as if his life depended on it, because even after twenty-five years of sobriety he still felt that in some way it still did.
But AA became more than that to my dad. It became a door inward. A way of starting to look inside instead of outside for stability. Those meetings slowly but surely allowed him to find a way to work on his broken psyche. To release all of the fear he had been harbouring. They help him realise that the answers he had been looking for outside were to be found inside, and only inside.
His journey has left a strong impression on me. Not only because it showed me early on where to go and find real answers to my existential questions but mainly because it has pointed me in the direction of my passion. To write and advocate for our inner life. To let others know that in order to feel any kind of liberation from the constant chatter of our minds, we need to get quiet and take time to listen. My dad turned a completely chaotic life into a beautifully rich spiritual experience which allowed him to be present and accept every moment as it was. By the end he had relinquished all fear. If he did, so can I and so can everyone.