I'm on mobile so formatting is shotty at best. Sorry. This also is something that pertains to my life not life in general so if you don't completely agree that's cool. If you do, also cool. I'm really just writing this down so I can share it at my outpatient group tomorrow night and thought someone could relate or start a discussion.

Okay, so before I get into the main topic, I'll provide the background for what brought me there. Earlier tonight I was watching the ufc main event and the fighter seemed to not care like at all. Not one bit. He lost the fight (possibly due to lack of skill, maybe lack of care, who knows) and while the fight was happening, he was joking around, smiling, laughing, etc. Announcers and people on the mma subreddit were bitching and moaning about him not caring. Just toxicity being strewn about left and right like they had money on him winning. Like, yeah, that was kinda lame but who really cares? Everyone is stressed and lashing out over this? It's absolutely absurd. That's when I realized that nothing besides a couple key things really matters in this world enough to warrant any semblance of stress and emotion.

The three things I boiled it down to are, in no order: money and mental/physical wellbeing. For starters, I'll say that money kind of rules society at the moment so for most people having enough money to provide the necessities is worthy of stress. So, some might say, "but earl, shouldn't sobriety be on that list?" And honestly, it kind of already is and I'll explain. Say our 2, let's call them motivators, are actors in a play. In order to put on a successful show these actors need equiptment to perform to their fullest potential. If one piece of equiptment fails, an actor may fall short of displaying their potential and, in some cases, all actors may fall short.

Sobriety, I believe, is the stage that the actors... I guess act upon while a stable job can be lights, friends can be audio, family can be music, whatever. A stage with holes and whatnot, like having relapses and binges, cause the three motivators to simultaneously take a nose dive. A shitty foundation fucks everything else up. I think most of us have seen this happen (I mean that's why we're here, right?) while going through with this addiction. But when reading the pamphlet of a play the stage is never given credit! Only the actors as having a stage to act upon is a given. Now, many people have families and especially kids. I am NOT saying that those factors are not motivators (or actors). They, in a way, are but they fall under the category of mental and physical wellbeing. This is because in order to be both physically and mentally healthy, family needs to be taken care of. If your kids are not well, you, as a parent, are not well. If your kids are not well and you, as a parent, are actually well, then you shouldn't be a parent. Just as having a stable job is required to have a stable income, the wellbeing of your child, the connection shared with friends, the pursuit of hobbies, the enjoyment of ice cream, you name it, is critical for the your mental/physicall health. Those are the things to stress about and to stress about it is often times good stress. Healthy stress. Motivational stress. Stress that ensures you have assignments turned in on time. Stress that makes you comfort your child when the thunderstorm is loud. Stress that motivates you to go lift heavy weights at the gym. Stress that keeps you sober so you don't let the day slip through your fingers. Everything else that isn't inherently geared towards those two key motivators are trivial at best.

I hope I explained that well enough. There was a lot to unpack.