The other day I found myself watching a cooking show on television. That's not an unusual thing, given how cooking shows are just about my favorite thing to watch. But, the unusual thing is something that happened toward the end of that show ... I started to cry.
Gordon Ramsey, a British celebrity chef, has a show called Kitchen Nightmares. That evening, he traveled to a small restaurant in Philadelphia called The Hot Potato Cafe, to do what he does on this show which is to transform a restaurant that is a bog loser into a success story. He found a kitchen nightmare for sure in this place being run into the ground by three sisters who owned it. With his usual flare and coarse language, Ramsey moved himself into their lives for a few days and changed everything about the Cafe. He engineered changes from the signs on the building to the menus, from the putrid potato skin entrée's to the life of the young chef, a 21-year old girl, who hated her job and didn't even see herself as a real chef.
And, that's where the emotion came into the story. This young girl, the niece of one of the owners, was pressed into being the restaurant's chef when she never had any prior experience, never went to chef school, and hated every moment of her time in that kitchen. Despite the fact that she was literally pushing garbage out the kitchen door to the unsuspecting diners, she had a flare for cooking and did the best she could given the circumstances of the failing restaurant. In fact, as Ramsey found out very quickly, it was the passion that this girl had that kept the operation afloat. He exploited that as the ground upon which he would build a new restaurant.
When he started to talk to this young woman with compassion and kindness and a very accurate critique of her work, my eyes started to tear up. Here was this lost soul who was busting her hump trying to make the impossible work every day, who was suddenly being recognized by an expert chef for her talent, skill and devotion to duty. Here was "The Boss" of all bosses, seeing her for what she really was and pulling her toward success. Here was someone who needed love and affection and was being given it by the most unlikely of all sources...Chef Ramsey who is known for his relentless, scathing, and no-holds-barred diatribes against restaurant owners and their crews. It was impressive to watch, and it affected me tremendously.
I literally started to cry when he took this young woman under his wing. He sheltered her and encouraged her and taught her how to get the very best from herself. And, by doing so, he did the same to me. I watched and identified with this young woman. I remember how much I appreciated having Homer Page in my life, a man who took me aside and guided me in the early moments of my working life. When I was pressing hard in my public relations career and going nowhere, Page came into my life and saw that I had talent in photography and encouraged me by teaching me how to get the best from whatever skill and talent I had. And, like Ramsey did for that woman, Page set the standard for me where I could excel.
So...there I sat, in front of a television, crying over a cooking show! At first I wondered why, but then it came to me...there's no question that I miss Page very, very much. He was the most influential man in my business life and a model for me in my personal life. Page died more than 25 years ago and it's as if he left me only yesterday. All it takes is a cooking show to remind me of that loss. But also feel the depth of the tremendous gratitude I have that he was in my life to put his arm around me and say, "Good job...now go out there and do it!"... just like Gordon Ramsey.
All the best, Roger W.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Ramblings of the mind...
Some thoughts that have been kicking around in my mind...
There's a new magazine that's out called Renew that is aimed at the recovering community. I'm not sure what the distribution of this is, or who the publisher really is. The mast says it comes from Chicago by way of Renew Media LLC in New York state. But, the scuttlebutt is that a well-known treatment and publishing center in the mid-West (a place I cannot mention in my blog because of rules where I work) is the real publisher. It's hard to tell. The magazine has two very large ads for this treatment center and its publishing arm, and they are scattered all over the place at the facility where I work. So, there's a very good chance this is really an in-house promotional piece for recovery masquerading as a real mass-media magazine. Regardless, the magazine has a lot of appeal. Its articles are varied and interesting. It is a combination of old school pop psychology and new age speak about recovery, body balance, and nutrition. Look for it on your local new stand.
There's a new web page called In The Rooms that is also targeting people in recovery. The website offers what they call the world's largest free online social network for the global recovery community. It seems like a safe and secure place to find old friends, make new friends, seek help in recovery, create a group, find a local meeting of a variety of 12 Step programs, listen to speaker tapes, and send instant messages. Apparently there are more than 120,000 members already (I signed up) in over 50 countries. More than 17 fellowships are represented in their various rooms. So, check out www.intherooms.com and see what interests you in recovery.
One of the part of In The Rooms is the speakers tapes section. I found a young man named Alf J there, a Canadian who delivered a short speech to a group in Canada at one time. He makes a lot of sense about what the 12 Steps of recovery mean to someone who has been clean a while - he said he's been sober since 2003. I thought you might want to listen about the spiritual journey this man is on, so I've enclosed a link here to listen to it...takes about 17 minutes.... just copy the following link and past it into your url address bar: http://www.intherooms.com/library/speaker?filter=aa.
Everything else seems to be going reasonably well today. As they say, a bad day clean is better than any good day using, and that applies to me today.
All the best, Roger W.
There's a new web page called In The Rooms that is also targeting people in recovery. The website offers what they call the world's largest free online social network for the global recovery community. It seems like a safe and secure place to find old friends, make new friends, seek help in recovery, create a group, find a local meeting of a variety of 12 Step programs, listen to speaker tapes, and send instant messages. Apparently there are more than 120,000 members already (I signed up) in over 50 countries. More than 17 fellowships are represented in their various rooms. So, check out www.intherooms.com and see what interests you in recovery.
One of the part of In The Rooms is the speakers tapes section. I found a young man named Alf J there, a Canadian who delivered a short speech to a group in Canada at one time. He makes a lot of sense about what the 12 Steps of recovery mean to someone who has been clean a while - he said he's been sober since 2003. I thought you might want to listen about the spiritual journey this man is on, so I've enclosed a link here to listen to it...takes about 17 minutes.... just copy the following link and past it into your url address bar: http://www.intherooms.com/library/speaker?filter=aa.
Everything else seems to be going reasonably well today. As they say, a bad day clean is better than any good day using, and that applies to me today.
All the best, Roger W.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
The NA Way...
I was reading the new edition of The NA Way today and came across an article in it that was written by a fellow recovering addict from Canada. I thought I'd pass it along as a great article about how people manage to stay clean only by entering the door of recovery...the Second Step of our 12 Step program. Enjoy!
Step Two
You know those Magic Eye® puzzles found in newspapers? I could never do
them. I’d try…and never get anything. And then, one day, I noticed something
below the picture: step-by-step directions. Well, I’d never followed directions
for anything, so I guessed this was an opportunity to practice the principle of
open-mindedness that Step Two suggests. When I followed the directions, the
picture came to life right before my eyes! It was through this experience that I was
able to look at Step Two in a new way. Coming into recovery, I found that
when I put down drugs, my behavior from “out there” automatically kicked in.
If I didn’t know something, I’d just make anything up and eventually believe it to
be true. NA offers step-by-step direction on how to “stop using drugs, lose
the desire to use, and find a new way to live.” Even though I wanted it on my own
terms, I realized these “directions” might provide a solution for me.
NA teaches us that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting
different results. For me, that meant if I was going to give recovery a shot, I
needed to do something different, and that meant learning to follow directions.
The directions are clear and simple:
• Attend meetings regularly.
• Work with a sponsor.
• Do some service work.
• Work the steps.
Oddly enough, I always thought of myself as a leader. However, true leaders
know when to take and follow direction. If I was going to master recovery and serve
as a leader, I was going to need to learn how to follow, to surrender. Much like
when I learned to see the Magic Eye®, the instant I surrendered to the process,
a new dimension revealed itself. I came to believe in the program and what it had
to offer. When I surrendered the insanity of my way and started to follow this new
path, life revealed itself in a way I had never experienced before.
Anonymous, Manitoba, Canada
Reprinted with permission from the November
2010 Manitoba Area Newsline
“Reprinted with permission from NA Way Magazine, January 2011
All the best, Roger W.
Step Two
You know those Magic Eye® puzzles found in newspapers? I could never do
them. I’d try…and never get anything. And then, one day, I noticed something
below the picture: step-by-step directions. Well, I’d never followed directions
for anything, so I guessed this was an opportunity to practice the principle of
open-mindedness that Step Two suggests. When I followed the directions, the
picture came to life right before my eyes! It was through this experience that I was
able to look at Step Two in a new way. Coming into recovery, I found that
when I put down drugs, my behavior from “out there” automatically kicked in.
If I didn’t know something, I’d just make anything up and eventually believe it to
be true. NA offers step-by-step direction on how to “stop using drugs, lose
the desire to use, and find a new way to live.” Even though I wanted it on my own
terms, I realized these “directions” might provide a solution for me.
NA teaches us that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting
different results. For me, that meant if I was going to give recovery a shot, I
needed to do something different, and that meant learning to follow directions.
The directions are clear and simple:
• Attend meetings regularly.
• Work with a sponsor.
• Do some service work.
• Work the steps.
Oddly enough, I always thought of myself as a leader. However, true leaders
know when to take and follow direction. If I was going to master recovery and serve
as a leader, I was going to need to learn how to follow, to surrender. Much like
when I learned to see the Magic Eye®, the instant I surrendered to the process,
a new dimension revealed itself. I came to believe in the program and what it had
to offer. When I surrendered the insanity of my way and started to follow this new
path, life revealed itself in a way I had never experienced before.
Anonymous, Manitoba, Canada
Reprinted with permission from the November
2010 Manitoba Area Newsline
“Reprinted with permission from NA Way Magazine, January 2011
All the best, Roger W.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Handling bad news...
I've recently been told that a close friend's wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This comes as a shock, not only because she appeared to be a healthy woman, but also because my friend - who has major chronic disease - always assumed he would die before his wife would. It doesn't look like that's the plan and this comes as a big, painful surprise to everyone.
Bad news, no matter what shape it comes in, is never expected. We can train ourselves to "hope for the best, but expect the worse", but, somehow when it strikes, truly bad news is never easy to deal with. This is the way this news is for my friend and I today. He feels "this is not the way it was supposed to work out" and this sadness over the unexpected turn of events in his life causes him a great deal of grief. But, under the surface of this is an anger...a righteous anger that things ought not go the way they are going and that someone (God) is at fault for this.
Whenever I come in contact with this kind of sadness, I am reminded of the book by Rabbi Harold Kushner called When Bad Things Happen To Good People. This book, that chronicles the struggle his own family went through when their young son was diagnosed with progeria (a disease of rapid aging and premature death). Kushner could hardly stand it. He watched as his son suffered and died way before his time, and he railed against a God who would do such a thing to his small son. In fact, such an event was for Kushner - who was trained as a rabbi and became a spiritual leader for many people - something that shook his faith and forced him to question everything he had ever thought or believed about God.
I will not be ruining the book's experience for anyone here by giving away a central discovery Kushner came to that helped him through this experience. In effect, Kushner challenged the common concepts of an all-knowing and all-powerful God by suggesting that, perhaps, God is no more powerful to correct the course of life than we are. He argued that it could very well be that, once he set the world as we know it in motion, forces took over that were greater than even God's power to control or influence. Once sickness was introduced into the human system, even God could not forestall it's inevitable conclusion.
It's in times like these that I remember Kushner's words. It is somehow consoling to me to know that God is no more capable of taking away ovarian cancer from a relatively young woman than her doctors are. It is somehow satisfying to me to realize that we men and women do what we can to alleviate suffering and hardship, but that there is only so much we can do against forces that seem to live on their own. And, it is enormously comforting to feel the presence of a God who weeps alongside of me as I suffer these things.
I cannot yet tell my friend this...the wound is too raw. But, at some point I will and hopefully, God willing, he will feel the same level of comfort knowing that a very powerful entity walks with him through this pain and grief. This is what I pray for these days.
All the best, Roger W.
Bad news, no matter what shape it comes in, is never expected. We can train ourselves to "hope for the best, but expect the worse", but, somehow when it strikes, truly bad news is never easy to deal with. This is the way this news is for my friend and I today. He feels "this is not the way it was supposed to work out" and this sadness over the unexpected turn of events in his life causes him a great deal of grief. But, under the surface of this is an anger...a righteous anger that things ought not go the way they are going and that someone (God) is at fault for this.
Whenever I come in contact with this kind of sadness, I am reminded of the book by Rabbi Harold Kushner called When Bad Things Happen To Good People. This book, that chronicles the struggle his own family went through when their young son was diagnosed with progeria (a disease of rapid aging and premature death). Kushner could hardly stand it. He watched as his son suffered and died way before his time, and he railed against a God who would do such a thing to his small son. In fact, such an event was for Kushner - who was trained as a rabbi and became a spiritual leader for many people - something that shook his faith and forced him to question everything he had ever thought or believed about God.
I will not be ruining the book's experience for anyone here by giving away a central discovery Kushner came to that helped him through this experience. In effect, Kushner challenged the common concepts of an all-knowing and all-powerful God by suggesting that, perhaps, God is no more powerful to correct the course of life than we are. He argued that it could very well be that, once he set the world as we know it in motion, forces took over that were greater than even God's power to control or influence. Once sickness was introduced into the human system, even God could not forestall it's inevitable conclusion.
It's in times like these that I remember Kushner's words. It is somehow consoling to me to know that God is no more capable of taking away ovarian cancer from a relatively young woman than her doctors are. It is somehow satisfying to me to realize that we men and women do what we can to alleviate suffering and hardship, but that there is only so much we can do against forces that seem to live on their own. And, it is enormously comforting to feel the presence of a God who weeps alongside of me as I suffer these things.
I cannot yet tell my friend this...the wound is too raw. But, at some point I will and hopefully, God willing, he will feel the same level of comfort knowing that a very powerful entity walks with him through this pain and grief. This is what I pray for these days.
All the best, Roger W.
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