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I wonder how often we wait for something to begin without realizing it already has.
I see this sometimes in conversations with people on the inpatient unit where I work. We’ll be talking about what life is going to look like when they leave treatment. They may be thinking about meetings, outpatient treatment, going back to work, reconnecting with family, or simply trying to stay sober one day at a time. There can be a sense that they’re getting ready for something. Once they walk out those doors, the real work of recovery will begin.
Every once in a while, I remind them that it already has.
The doors on the unit aren’t locked from the inside. Someone can decide to leave at any time. It would be considered leaving against medical advice, and there may be consequences depending on their circumstances, but nobody is physically keeping them there. They still have choices.
So I’ll ask them to think about what they’ve already done that day. They got up. They stayed. They participated. Maybe they sat through a group they didn’t particularly want to attend or had a conversation they would rather have avoided. None of that seems particularly dramatic, but when they put their head on the pillow that night, they have another twenty-four hours behind them in which they kept making the next right choice.
I love watching someone’s face when that sinks in. They’ve been thinking of treatment as the place they have to get through before recovery really starts. Suddenly they can see that this day counts too. They’re already doing it.
I’ve done my own versions of this. I’ve imagined that something would really begin once I reached some point out in front of me. Once I got through this. Once I figured that out. Once circumstances were different. It’s easy to create starting lines for ourselves and then keep moving them.
Most change doesn’t come from one big decision that takes care of everything from that point forward. We get a day, and during that day we make a bunch of choices. Most of them aren’t dramatic. We make one, then another one comes along. Over time, those ordinary choices begin to add up.
And it’s certainly not just recovery. We tell ourselves we’ll start taking better care of ourselves when life settles down, become more present when we’re less busy, or finally do that thing we’ve been thinking about when we feel more ready. Meanwhile, we may already be doing some of the very things we’re waiting to begin.
That’s what I enjoy about these conversations on the unit. Of course the hope is that life will be different when they leave. That’s why they’re there. But they don’t have to wait until they walk out the door to recognize that something is already changing. Sometimes I’m just asking them to look at what’s already happening.
I think we can spend so much time looking toward where we want to be that we don’t give much thought to how far we’ve already moved in that direction. We’re waiting for the day when we can finally say we’ve started, while overlooking the choices we’re already making today.
Maybe we don’t always need another starting line. Sometimes we just need to notice that we’ve already crossed it and give ourselves a little credit for the steps we’ve already taken.
Those small choices count.
