I Continue to Survive

I got a little drunk the other night.

I don’t drink often, and when I do, it’s usually a glass of wine with dinner. My body just cannot take the abuse alcohol gives it.

When I have had too many drinks, I tend to get a silly, talky kind of drunk. I don’t get overly dramatic, overly loud, or, apparently, overly clever. My mind still tends to wander in ten directions at one time, but much, much slower.

The reasons for imbibing too many cherry vodka and cokes is multi-reasoned. (Isn’t it always?) We had to put one of our dogs down because he just was too mean and unpredictable, and had already bit my son’s kids and my other dog.

This is not wondering about being right or wrong — it’s done. But what it made me feel still lingers.

Do you think we’re often too sensitive for our own good?

That, although we know the truth about unpleasant situations, we still cannot help but over react?

I sometimes get tired of being over sentimental. Over emotional. Over reactive.

I’m much better than I used to be, but if it were tree huggers on the left and reasonable minds on the right, I’d be first in line on the left.

Occasionally I get overly over the top. I think I wrote a blog about this very condition — anthropomorphism. The attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object. I seem to give human thought to everything …. birds, rabbits, snakes. Like they’re thinking in human terms and words.

There is nothing wrong with being empathetic. Compassionate. Loving. We should be all of the above.

There is, however, a line that needs to be drawn between human thoughts and reactions and those of a bird … or a dog. 

If you don’t get a grip on giving other creatures human thoughts you will be drowned out by the thoughts of millions of ants in the ground and elder bugs crawling on trees and salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

I think you get my drift. 

Back to my earlier point.

Drinking was a knee-jerk reaction to coping with things I didn’t want to cope with. And perhaps for 20 minutes I didn’t. But then life circled back again, especially in the morning when I woke up with a banger headache and remembered why I don’t drink any more.

The experience was still there. The truth had already been spoken. And I still had to handle it all.

As I always say, the past cannot be changed. Deal with it. Life goes on, whether we want it to or not. So accepting every day as it comes is the best way to live long and prosper. Drinking ourselves into oblivion solves nothing. No matter if you’re 20 or 50 or 70.

Even if it did taste good going down.