Friday Thoughts by the Fire: #80
Forged
“Man, it’s easier to just do the drugs!”
This guy was not enjoying the process of getting into substance use treatment. I was screening him for eligibility and he wanted to go to a place that was not one of our contracted providers.
In frustration, he dramatically admitted that the process of getting into treatment was more difficult than it was to just keep doing the drugs that were holding him in place.
He was taken aback when I agreed with him. “You’re right. It is easier to do the drugs”.
There is nothing in life that is easy about significant change. Especially change for the better. Read that again.
This guy could’ve buried his head and just kept getting high. It is easier for him to be numb than to confront the endless future possibilities that his mind was exhausting him with.
Here he was, 90 days away from being a more confident person or just feeling better overall. 90 days away from getting rid of the bad influences in his circle. 90 days away from being able to tell people, “I’m sober”. 90 days away from getting out of a self-made prison.
But he wanted to go back because it was easy.
This is our human experience. Our lives are built around convenience. The majority of people don’t have goals, don’t know where they want to be in 5 years, and cannot see past the next week.
From an outsider’s view, it’s easy to see that continuing on a path of destruction to your own soul is not good. But a man that has reached the point of a phone call, the doorstep of his own recovery, decided it might be better to turn around and sink back into the numbing sensation of getting high. Or he was at least tempted by it.
He saw that there is nothing convenient about what he is destined to go through. Seeking help, going to a treatment program, having to live there for the next few months. All he saw were the inconveniences. The discomfort of change.
No doubt it took him on a thought-path that had him trying to convince himself he could get off the substance, cold turkey.
He was facing the unknown. A disturbing and uncomfortable feeling. It is easier to do the drugs.
He saw that he had no choice, though. I think that scared him the most. We love to not only control the outcome, but control the avenue as well. After all, if we’re making the right choice, don’t we deserve a smooth ride?
Life confronts us with “forks” in the road all the time. We seem to always have a choice to either continue to do the “drugs” or forge a different way.
Forging promises to be uncomfortable. In the physical sense, it means to heat up a metal object long enough that it can be hammered into a different shape. Used for an appropriate purpose.
The easy way promises familiarity and mediocrity. It’s a paralyzing poison. It tempts us into staying the same. Because then no change is required. We can just be numb forever.
What a life.
I told this guy that doing the drugs is indeed easy, but it isn’t worth it. He has a life, and however small and insignificant he thinks it might be, every life is valuable.
He cannot see the opportunities that he has yet to experience in the future if he’s just willing to step into the fire and change. All he feels right now is the pain of the forging, and at the same time, he’s incapable of seeing the positive outcomes of that pain.
If he does the hard thing now, he is going to change someone’s life for the better, later.
Let me offer something that I have to offer myself every day—The hard thing is worth it. The difficulty is worth it.
Change is worth it. It offers a guarantee that you can’t find in any comfortable, familiar, and unchanging avenue — it offers growth. A better version of ourselves. A more useful version.
I wouldn’t dare let my kids see a version of me that doesn’t try to grow beyond what is familiar, especially if that familiarity is toxic to my being. They deserve to know that hard things in life don’t have to stop them from developing into the amazing people they are meant to be.
Struggle will happen. Pain is a guarantee. Staying the same is a choice.
A forged metal is literally hammered into shape. Only then is it made complete with purpose.