The Very Next Thought

Trey McIntyre's dance company performing “Leatherwing Bat” last month at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, Mass

There are all kinds of things that I think automatically, answers I give without consideration, judgements I enter without a fair trial. Moving beyond my knee-jerk psychic construct, at least with regard to drugs and alcohol, and with regard to many of my ideas about myself, has been an absolute necessity in getting and staying sober. That process hasn’t so much been one of erasing my automatic judgements, but one of replacing them with new ones. That is the exclusive product of enough honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness to let go of my old ideas, acknowledge the truth about myself, and to view the situation through the lens of “a new pair of glasses.” Being the lazy and comfort seeking creature I am, and being that I am more often motivated by pain than anything else, many of my automatic judgments have never been called for appellate review.

One of the things I’ve never had to review is my eagerness to attend theater. I have been the grateful beneficiary of many “extra” tickets. My love of theater remains unfettered by the spotty quality of my experiences there. So when my sponsor told me a couple of days ago that he had an extra ticket to the Trey McIntyre Project and asked if I’d like to go, I automatically said yes. Now I had no idea whatever what the TMP was. None. And I didn’t even care. Whatever it is I can’t afford it. The worst thing that could happen is that I would be bored.

Just as mindless as my objective bias in favor of theater is a bias against ballet. It isn’t so much that I don’t like ballet as the fact that classical music and a darkened room produces in me a state closely resembling a coma. Given the choice between a coma and an AA meeting, I’ll choose the meeting every time. And yesterday morning as I was reading and listening to the morning news I heard this performance, of what I still wasn’t sure, described as the “social event of the season” The very next thought was, “I have nothing to wear.” And I really mean that. I once owned some beautiful clothes and my addiction took them from me, along with everything else. I have the bare minimum of what is absolutely necessary to live in the little world I live in now, and even there I’m deficient. I wouldn’t be bothered by that if I knew we were headed to the balcony, but beiing who he is, my sponsor would have fantastic seats (4th row center) and know everyone. Everyone. . . . everyone.

By the time that I realized that I would be an obvious recipient of charity in a situation that my pride insists that I must be able to stand on my own and at an event that I was sure I wouldn’t find engaging, it was too late to cancel. My first next thought and the action it prompted had backed me into a corner I was very uncomfortable being in.

Stepping out of my little shell and into that situation was wonderful though. I’m sure I didn’t look as stupid as I thought I would. The performance was far outside of anything I ever imagined ballet could be; quirky and amusing and understandable and relevant.

So my very next thought landed me in a situation where I had to act in contradiction to my very next thought. And it was fantastic.