Hugo Schwyzer

My alarm went off at 5:30 this morning; I had a relatively easy seven-mile run scheduled. Though I had had gone to bed before 11:00 last night, and slept well, I woke up drained. I lay there for a few minutes, trying to decide whether to get up and force myself through the work-out, or turn off the alarm and catch another hour next to my wife. I’m glad to say I did the latter.

It’s very, very easy for me to neglect my self-care. Like a great many people, I make lists in my head of the various things I want to accomplish in any given day. Time for sleep and time for spiritual reflection usually get bumped to the bottom of the list in favor of both fulfilling vital obligations (teaching, grading, writing letters of rec, taking care of chinchillas, doing laundry) and not-so-vital ones (reading blogs and exercising several hours per day.)

I’ve got to keep a close eye on my addictive nature. When I first got sober many years ago, my sponsor said to me “Watch out, Hugo, the disease moves laterally.” I wasn’t sure what he meant at the time, but quickly found out. I gave up the alcohol, and turned (in no particular order) to compulsive sex, disordered eating, and — briefly — fundamentalist religiosity. It was in sobriety that my weight dropped to 145 pounds on my frame (I’m a lean 175 now, for comparison). It was in sobriety that I experimented with intolerant zealotry. It was while sober that I began to struggle both with pornography and reckless promiscuity; I traded physical intoxication for the high of seduction. The disease moved laterally indeed.

Today I eat a healthy vegan diet, and my weight is fine. It’s higher, frankly, than my anxieties would like it to be — but I’ve learned to trust my loved ones and my nutritionist and my trainers more than my own fears. I haven’t used porn in a very, very long time. I’m in a faithful, joyously monogamous marriage. I work out only 15 hours a week or so — a fraction of my past average. And though my passion for Jesus has not waned or dimmed, my flirtation with fundamentalism is long gone.

Sometimes it’s easy for me to imagine that I’ve outgrown my addictiveness. I talk often — perhaps too often — of how “I’m forty now, and I see things differently.” Well, I’ve got a lot more patience to go with my life experience now that I’m forty, and that’s undeniable. But even graceful ageing is not a panacea for addiction. God and I worked together to surrender my most destructive behaviors, and yet still, still, I find myself falling into compulsive behavior. (Shall I confess that when I first got onto Facebook earlier this year, I spent the better part of a night tracking down everyone I knew — even remotely — from cousins to colleagues — to add them as my “friends”? I stayed up until 3:30AM doing it.) And even now, at forty, I still often choose the endorphin high of the workout over both necessary rest and prayer time.

Every few months, I decide to “get back on the prayer program.” I set aside quiet time in the morning: no newspaper, no CNN or Bloomberg in the background, no music, no computer. I sit quietly in our darkened living room. I read a short passage of Scripture and meditate on it, following the lectio divina. I often say “I’m going to do this for an hour!” It quickly becomes twenty minutes, then ten, then… well, soon I’m off running around the Rose Bowl, or reading the sports section instead. Lord knows, I’ve been addicted to everything else: why, oh why, can’t I get addicted to morning quiet time? Why can’t I become compulsive about meditation?

Why can’t I get high on the thrill of just being rather than getting high on something else to do? I know the answer: all addictions, even the “healthy” ones (like work, or exercise) are, in some sense, about denying feeling. Addiction, in the end, is about not wanting to experience guilt or shame. Real stillness challenges me, both because I have a restless hyperactivity and because in real stillness, I’m confronted with my own frailty. I don’t do well with that. For someone who claims to be spiritual, I’m really not. Lately, I’ve fallen back into the habit of saying to God: “Hi. What can I do for you today? What new task do you have in mind for me?” And whether it’s teaching seven classes or taking on still another volunteer position, I tend to confuse being a good Christian with being a very active member of the community. As long as all God wants from me is more positive action — then me and God, we’re cool. When He wants me to be still, I get anxious and cross. Even at forty, even with all of these years of sobriety, even with all of these years of walking the walk.

Step one today: letting my body rest. Step two: doing some quiet prayer, but without setting a minimum time. Step three: stop compulsively checking Facebook, or reading the latest political polling data, or worrying about whether one boxing class will be enough exercise for today. Step four: remember that beneath my anxiety and my restlessness, after the fires and earthquakes of my life, there is a still, small voice.

I think the best post I’ve written in 2007 is this one. I wrote of the high school girls in my youth group:

…as our fourteen girls shared, I had realized that I was sitting in a room filled to the rafters with Marthas, with nary a Mary to be found! Like Martha, they are “worried and upset about many things”. They don’t know how to rest; they are “distracted by all the preparations that (have) to be made.” These Marthas — my dear, beautiful, brave, overachieving, anxious, exhausted girls — live lives that are governed by an endless series of “to do lists”. They wake up with “have to’s” and go to bed with “ought to have’s” and spend their days thinking about their “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” But only one thing is needed, and that is to sit at the foot of God.

And what I should have admitted is that I really, really, really need to be better about taking my own advice. I’m a Martha too, you see.