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Share your quitting journey

We Seek We Grow We Learn

JonesCarpeDiem
0 6 5

The whole lesson that needs to be learned in life is simple:

To accept the emptiness.

At the very core of life, emptiness is what IS.

Emptiness is at the center of all human experience.

We smoke and drink and spend money we don't have and pine for things and people and days gone by and worship our idols to escape from it, but it's always there.

Emptiness.

Nothing left to do or say. "What now?" we ask. "How do I replace what's lost?" we wonder.

We quit smoking because it was killing us but we hate the empty feeling we have without it.

We leave abusive people and return to them, or someone like them, for the same reason.

We don't like prisons such as depression, guilt, our addiction to nicotine, alcohol, sex or our low self esteem but it's the only reality we know.

To deal with emptiness is to confront our demons and see them for what they really are. Nothing at all!

Emptiness is just the flow of life and reality as it really is.

Times change. Relationships end. Jobs are lost. Loved ones die. Old lifestyles change. Our children grow up. Addictions are broken.

We move on. We have to.

To not accept the emptiness is to stagnate. To look back is to turn to salt like Lot's wife.

The lesson to learn is to "Let it Be" as the Beatles said. To let go does indeed cause grief and suffering.

We cry for awhile and time passes and things improve. We look back after a few years at what's lost, and though we still feel a pang of grief, we see that we did manage to move on despite ourselves.

Life is dynamic! Like a river it constantly moves on. We can sit at the river's edge and watch it flow while we cry, or get a canoe and jump in it for the ride.

Imagine what all you'll see on the journey! "What's next?" we ask now with eager anticipation...

author unknown

6 Comments
About the Author
Hello, My name is Dale. I was quit 18 months before joining this site and had participated on another site during that time. I learned a lot there and brought it with me. I joined this site the first week of August 2008. I didn't pressure myself to quit. HOW I QUIT I didn't count, I didn't deny myself to get started. When I considered quitting (at a friends request to influence his brother to quit), I simply told myself to wait a little longer. No denial, nothing painful. After 4 weeks I was down to 5 cigarettes from a pack a day. The strength came from proving to myself, I didn't need to smoke because I normally would have smoked. Simple yes? I bought the patch. I forgot to put one on on the 4th day. I needed it the next day but the following week I forgot two days in a row I put one in my wallet with a promise to myself that I would slap it on and wait an hour rather than smoke. It rode in my wallet my first year.There's nothing keeping any of you from doing this. It doesn't cost a dime. This is about unlearning something you've done for a long time. The nicotine isn't the hard part. Disconnecting from the psychological pull, the memories and connected emotions is. :-) Time is the healer.