Impulses, Sobriety, and Looking for the Sparks

I’m not particularly good at making decisions

This isn’t false humility. It’s just a pattern I’ve watched in my behavior, family circles and many people I admire

For years I actively avoided leadership roles and visibility because I didn’t trust myself with them. I’ve paid ridiculous amounts of money because an idea sounded elegant in my head. Once I spent more than $800 just to have a painting delivered from Sotheby’s because I thought I’d be fancier than driving 20 minutes with a rental Uhaul to pick it up

I’ve given away tens of thousands of dollars to projects, parties, art installations, and experiences. Some of them changed lives. Some of them literally went up in flames because that’s what we built them to do

I’ve also been drunk enough more than once to hurt the people who loved me the most

Not because I wanted to

But because intention isn’t the same thing as consequence

I just spent ten days sober so far, the longest stretch I’ve had in quite a while. Longer than the last time I was “preparing” for ayahuasca

And somehow it was long enough to hear thoughts that alcohol normally drowns out

Carl Jung wrote that one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. I think about that a lot. It’s easy to create a version of ourselves that’s always the hero. Much harder to sit with the parts we’d rather edit out

Kabbalah says something similar in a different language. The world is full of hidden sparks waiting to be lifted. Sometimes those sparks aren’t hiding in our successes. Sometimes they’re buried inside our failures, our addictions, our shame, our apologies, and the relationships we hope aren’t beyond repair

Many of the sparks I’ve found and people I inspired happened after a series of bad decisions

Kabbalah also teaches us that there’s no good or evil, and that can be confusing

Looking back, there were so many moments where I genuinely wasn’t trying to hurt anyone

But their pain is still real, as real as the guilt that keeps me awake at night. Good intentions don’t erase consequences

I’ve spent a lot of time wanting to become “all saint.” To wake up one morning perfectly disciplined, perfectly patient, perfectly sober, perfectly wise

But human beings aren’t built that way

We’re collections of gifts, flaws, instincts, trauma, habits, and hope. We spend our lives trying to arrange them into something beautiful

Sometimes we succeed

Sometimes we apologize

Sometimes we start over

I don’t know what my relationship with alcohol will look like five years from now. Maybe one day I’ll simply stop forever

Or maybe I’ll continue wrestling with the very human delusion that I’m stronger than my own disease. One of my favorite family members from being a kid was a successful businessman, with his own little airplane he’d fly to drilling sites around Colombia; last I heard about him he was homeless somewhere

Would my ambitions come true, or will I end up a loquito in the park, I don’t know

What I do know is this: whatever battle someone else is fighting, addiction, grief, depression, anger, loneliness, pride, you can’t see it

So lead with empathy

The stranger who seems difficult

The friend who disappeared

The person who keeps promising they’ll do better

The family member who relapsed

The version of yourself you’re embarrassed to remember

We are all carrying stories that don’t fit inside first impressions

If there’s one thing these ten sober days reminded me, it’s that healing is rarely dramatic. Most of the time it’s painfully ordinary. It’s saying no one more time. It’s making one better decision today than yesterday. It’s finding one more hidden spark in the places you’d rather not look

I hope that’s enough