Thursday, Dec. 24, 2020
Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:
Those who can’t endure the bad will not live to see the good. — Yiddish saying
Some messages from our culture seem like attempts to persuade us that life should be easy, fun, and profitable—morning, noon, and night. Otherwise, we’re led to believe, we are being cheated out of the “rights” promised to those born in a country of privilege and plenty.
We may have to relearn life’s hard lesson that to prevail, we often need to persevere and endure. Images seduce us with promises of immediate gratification; fantasies beckon us to the quick fix. It’s not surprising so many of us succumb to addiction; we’re just not used to having to wait and strive for our rewards.
To work to be free of addictive behavior, we have to change our way of thinking about the world. We may have to learn, perhaps for the first time, to do without, to be patient, and to defer our pleasures—to wait for what rewards there may be. At first we may feel cheated and betrayed, but then, as our program starts working, we will gain more enduring satisfaction rather than the fleeting, empty pleasures of our addiction.
I am learning to be patient and to persevere in a world that was not constructed just for me and my pleasures.
Hazelden Foundation
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