What I Have to Work With (Adventures in Temporary Enforced Sobriety, Part 6)

I got married in a rush to save a kid from being deported/ Now she's in loveI was so touched, I was moved to kick the crutches/ From my crippled friendShe was not impressed that I cured her on the Sabbath/ So I went to confessWhen she saw the funny side, we introduced my child bride/ To whisky and gin— Belle and Sebastian “The State I Am In”

A wise friend once told me that he had no problem with technology, provided it was being used as a tool, not a toy. This was decades ago, before the ubiquitousness of the internet and various portable devices, but it’s stuck with me. I sometimes use it to pull myself out of an internet rabbit hole: Like, why am I reading this article right now? Will it serve me in my real life at all? One of my favorite words is “edification” — I love the idea of my ultimate purpose being to improve things, build on them, strengthen their foundations. My own foundation included. So I can read online about local political issues, read interviews with politicians to change my mind or confirm my existing predilections. I can talk about this red carpet photo set with my childhood best friend, these local restaurant reviews with coworkers. I can read the work my writer friends have posted to Facebook and like their links because it makes them feel good, and because maybe one day they’ll do the same for me. Building, improving, strengthening.

But it’s a hard line to toe these days, as our “real lives” are increasingly online as much as they are in physical space. Does it really matter whether our online actions better our offline existence when there’s qualitative influence occurring in the other direction as well? The photos I take, the remarks that I make, posted online for others to enjoy and be edified by, serves to make my time online worthwhile. I guess that when we’re feeding the machine, the tool-to-toy metric is measured differently, in a loop instead of a line. Whichever way the information is flowing, I want the ultimate end to be additive, not subtractive. Or at the very least neutral.

But even if I manage to really really really just play five games of Candy Crush — only as much as my regular lives allow, not using any of the ones I’ve been gifted, just long enough to decompress or to wait in line — is that using my smartphone as a tool or a toy? Does that little endorphin zap, however easily gotten, build me up so that I can accomplish loftier, more inherent goals? I know that time could be more virtuously spent in reflection or rest or in just being present. But let’s be real here: it’s complicated. And if I use an app to help me meditate, it gets even more so. If tool-to-toy is the spectrum of usefulness we’re dealing with when it comes to tech, where does “crutch” status fall?

Crutch: a long stick with a padded piece at the top that fits under a person's armCrutch: something that a person uses too much for help or support—Merriam-Webster

I’ve written in this series about how the experimentation with chemicals I did in my college years allowed me to make the leap from inside my head to out in the world. There is a part of me that is very public — as evidenced by this blog but also in person. If you have spent any time with me at all, you’ve maybe noticed that I am most comfortable in a social setting when telling a story. But telling a story to one person can feel like a one-sided conversation — and I do like a good two-person conversation — so I prefer telling a story to, oh, I don’t know, probably two-to-four people at once. (I also like getting onstage and telling a story, but that occurrence is harder to come by.) Even though parties and gatherings are ripe with storytelling opportunities, you can’t just go around talk-talk-talking every time you manage to wrestle three people into a corner at a cocktail do. Then you’d be an asshole. By “you” here I do mean “me.” And I like listening to other people’s stories, observing others’ interactions, helping to get the mood of the room cohesive and copacetic — and dancing and singing and getting the rest of the cheese out of the fridge and getting the door and all of those other things that one can do at a social gathering besides suck up all the air in a room for the length of time it takes to spin a yarn. But sometimes it’s hard to settle down enough to let all those other things happen.

You know what’s really handy in those instances? Booze.

So yeah: tool or toy or crutch? These examples are ripped from the headlines of my illustrious pre-sobriety life.

• Tool: A glass of wine at a party opens doors to a mellower dimension.
• Toy: A shot of tequila makes the band sound better.
• Crutch: A fancy cocktail at happy hour celebrates a productive day of busting ass at work; a beer while doing weekend chores makes them less, well, chore-like.

The crutches are what I’m having trouble kicking out from under myself, I guess: the things that make easier the things you absolutely have to do. More pleasant. Sure, there’s reward in doing well at your profession, in keeping your house in shape. But, as it turns out, I’m not so good at the whole “virtue is its own reward” thing. Parties and lackluster bands I can avoid. Virtuous life-stuff: unavoidable.

This is where I get spirituality. I do. Guys, really. I get why various Anonymousses rely on turning to a higher power. I admire my friends and family who find solace in spirituality without sacrificing their abilities to think for themselves (especially when they do it in a way that allows for foul language and pop culture references). But the things I remember most from my own conservative Jewish upbringing are the stories. That’s the thing I remember most about everything. But I stopped buying the overall concept right around when I left private school for public, and one of our rabbi’s High Holiday sermons strongly implied the superiority of us chosen folks to the rest of the Earth’s population. Maybe I just wanted to believe some of my new school chums were pretty all right; maybe I was showing my egalitarian stripes early. Whatever the reason, organized religion fell out of favor with me right then, and I let it fall.

Did faith follow soon after? I don’t know. I’m not much of a believer in things I can’t see, although I can be positively Mulderlike in my desire to believe in some of them. I know I’m a fan of setting intentions — I think I was even before I permanently relocated to California — but that probably comes down to a guilt reflex that makes me feel responsible to keeping my promises as soon as I say them out loud. (I never said I wasn’t culturally Jewish.) As I’ve gotten older and lost people I love, I’ve thought more about what happens after that but, though I regularly talk to my parents and aunt and my pal Roberta, I’m still pretty agnostic when it comes to the afterlife. But they’re characters in my story, and stories are the things I understand. So I’m spinning these stories for you in place, perhaps, of putting my sober faith in a higher power, or of sitting still and quiet and letting everything empty out. It’s a tool and a toy and a crutch and a placeholder and a time-waster. As Hedwig says, “It’s what I have to work with.”