SERENITY

While at Donwood recently, a friend of mine threw me off balance when he asked me if I "had experienced serenity yet?"

He felt that with seven years of sobriety, I would be the logical one to ask. I really had to stop and think that one over! Looking back, it is impossible when I first experienced serenity, but I am sure it has come to me, although in only 90 percent of the time.

The rest of the time I am up-tight, nervous, or uncomfortable, from dealing with life's many problems, and unexpected traumas. I have never yet met a person who is totally serene and calm, throughout all his life. If there is one, he is no doubt incarcerated in one of our institutions for the mentally unstable, for it is entirely u-human to be serene all the time.

I once knew a man who was considered "saintly" by everyone who knew him. He was always available to everyone with a word of comfort, or a helping hand. His countenance was always peaceful, with a soft smile and a ready greeting. He was the closest to "Christ-like" that I have ever seen.

One time, however, I got on his nerves so badly with my consistent demands for something that I required from him that he blew up! He laid on me a very blasphemous word that at the time shocked, and disappointed me. Now I don't shock easily, and since I feel most humans are greatly flawed, you can understand the great amount of esteem I held for this man.

After the initial shock, it was evident that this man was only acting in a typically human fashion, and I had unfairly created him into a superman which he was not.

Don't we do this to ourselves, expecting nothing but complete and heroic reactions when we are confronted with problems? How can we, you and I, be expected to react any better? Unfortunately we expect complete control, turn the other cheek, display no emotion. Don't let the world see you react - with those awful emotions that you feel - that you were born with, and which will stay with you to the day you die.

This man was human, as you and I are, and probably Christ was. It is very likely that Christ could have felt and expressed purely human reactions when placed under stress. Why in the devil do we expect ourselves to do better?

Yes, most of time I am serene, life is good, even and uneventful. Yet, pressure builds up, and there other pressures and stresses that can overcome the best laid plans to remain serene. So I react, the emotions are poured out, usually on someone near to me, my wife, a friend, someone who cares enough not to hold it against me, who knows that I must let off steam. Then it is over, and I can return to "normal", with a smile on my face.

UNTIL THE NEXT TIME. I FEEL BETTER. AND I DID'T TAKE A DRINK!

DON FELSTEAD Don says: I wrote this in November of 1976, and as I look at this article today, I remember the man written about above as a very nice, good man, who as fine a person he was, very humanly reacted to my pressure. He has passed on since, and I hope he is looking over my shoulder as I type this. I hope he knows that I genuinely liked and admired him.