Our society doesn’t reward ‘trying’ as much as expertise. I love this quote I found on instagram:
“Pretty shitty how baseline human activities like singing, dancing and making art got turned into skills instead of being seen as behaviors. So now it’s like ‘the point of doing them is to get good at them’ and not ‘this is a thing humans do, the way birds sing and bees make hives.’” @womenwhorunwiththemoon
This morning I watched a crow trying to break open a nut, I think a walnut; it was pretty big! She dropped it from high on a telephone wire, then swooped down to pick it up and try again. Her friend was nearby waiting, flying around her trying to see, “is it open yet?” This disrupted her plans of returning directly to the same telephone wire, and I watched as they both flew away.
What struck me was how this crow wasn’t efficient. She was experimenting. She ran her trial then, with a curious, sideways head, observed the results. It was adorable! And a joy to watch. She was working on solving the problem to obtain a tasty snack.
When we’re first getting sober, we have to experiment. We had spent so much, if not all, of our time wrapped up in the addiction and the behaviors and lies required to maintain it. So with all this new free time, what are we supposed to do? Especially when that free time doesn’t feel fun; it’s a burden.
One thing we learn in recovery is to shift our perspective. We can choose to see ‘trying’ as a beautiful thing. We can take our time. We can be less serious. We can enjoy being new at something, even if we feel like we’re bad at it. Everyone was once a beginner; we might as well try to enjoy the process.