Herons

Futility is a toy sailboat on a glassy harbour.

 That’s what I thought. It looked like a fun hobby, toy sailboating, though not one that I could see myself getting involved in, not at the time. My habit was to walk along the Steveston promenade every day, often several times a day. There didn’t seem to be much else to do at the time, that time being post lockdown, but still pretty early covid, and it was always a very pleasant and calming walk for me.

It’s more interesting to do the same walk every day than it sounds. The shape of the discovery is much different than adventure walking, which is what I call mixing up my walking habit with different routes. When you walk the same path every day you get to witness the slow changes, yet you often don’t even realize it until one day you’re overdressed, or underdressed, or need to bring more water next time, or Oh! there’s a flower! Finally! It’s been.....how long? Months? Has it been months since...whatever?

Everything grabs your attention when you’re lost, but nothing holds it. It’s hard to commit to a hobby, or even a routine, when you’ve got no anchor, no healing pastimes. I often wondered about the Asian guys that I saw on sitting on the dock every single day with their rods, buckets which may have doubled as a seat, and maybe not, in which case, folding chair, maybe a mug, or a small cooler. They were, and almost certainly still are, all spread out along the float like Herons on the beach, and less than half as social. Only once did I ever see anyone catch anything. Once, in hundreds of passages, thousands of accumulated hours, for one fish the size of a dessert spoon. Ironically, the day of that unprecedented success was the day that I took what I thought was the perfect picture of futility.

Every few Thursdays-at least I think it was Thursdays; I’m sure they had a schedule, but I, most assuredly, did not.- a very pleasant gaggle of folks would come down to the promenade and set up stations on custom (for the keels) folding tables to prepare their little sailboats for the races. Meanwhile, some preordained operative was out in the rowboat that had a special place on the float and was never stolen, clipping marker buoys to the small anchored floats. Unlike the territorial fishermen, these enthusiasts were...enthusiastic, and friendly, and I, who often at that time, went many days without a conversation, found myself engaged in one. I didn’t learn much aside from what day it was, and that, from her manner, the lady thought her husband’s hobby was adorable. It was nice, and at a break in our brief chat, we both turned to look at the river, and my, what an extraordinarily calm day it was. We both nodded; we both smirked.

Upon my return an hour later, I saw that all the boats were in the water, and all the sailors were on the dock. And that was it. Nothing moved. The water was glass.

I took picture and called it futility, having just learned that it was a Thursday.

But it was just a moment, one five-hundredth of a second, and it’s been bugging me for two years. Futile, worthless. I did mean it as a joke, but I’ve been going through old pictures and processing old thoughts, and I took another look at what I, with tongue in cheek, called futile. I see about a dozen happy people playing outside. I see a community of nerds who get excited about a hobby, and take opportunity to enjoy it.

We were all laughing, me from the bank, and all of them on the dock, even some other passers-by, laughing at the silliness of a bunch of grown-ups having the slowest race ever, and loving every moment of it.

When I called that scene futile, I meant it as a joke, and I certainly didn’t mean worthless. In truth, I was jealous. I was jealous because they were so full, and I felt so empty because I had no hobbies, and I spent my time as if it had no value, and day after day just went by, every minute, worthless.

But I was wrong about that, too. The hardest part of early recovery is finding the value in the personal history lesson without spiralling into despair, and that humility is the only mark of courage that you will be able to attain for a while. I wasn’t in recovery because I had spent decades being right about everything. That, is hard to accept, and the fact is that I was reeling for my entire first year of sobriety, and then I had to relearn what was up, and what was down, to find out what the truth was, and stay as close to it as I could, as I can. Early sobriety is unrelentingly brutal, and sometimes all you can do is weather the shell shock, not of the physical damage that you’ve done, that passes in a few months, but of all the hurts that you were hiding from, and all the hurts that you inflicted because you couldn’t heal. Over time that adds up, but it all comes back at once, and it feels like it’s too much, and that you’re worthless, and that resistance is futile, and it’s the worst......it’s just the worst.

And you’ve got to snap out of it.

Get a hobby. Literally anything will do, even toy sailboating.