Mazes aren't my forte. My pencil gets lost whenever I put it to paper and try to draw an uninterrupted line from start to finish through the branching puzzle. Usually my course leads to a dead end or doubles back along the same path until the pencil's wake abruptly disappears, marking yet another failed and frustrating engagement with a design that is easier seen than done.
Fortunately, a labyrinth is not a maze, because on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, I walked the stone-lined path of a labyrinth in the desert in Arizona. Labyrinths have been around since the days of the Greeks and the Romans, and somewhere along the way, people discovered something spiritual in the experience of following a simple spiral path from an opening at the outside to the center and back again. Now I know why.
My toughest year in recovery was the year just passed. I thought the same thing after 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Each was harsher than the previous, with the nadir being a divorce after a 20-year relationship in 2009. What made this stretch especially tricky is that it wasn't all bad. I also wrote my best-selling memoirs, "Broken"; published a second book with Hazelden, called "A New Day, A New Life"; watched my kids blossom into responsible teenagers; caught a lot of fish at my cabin in Wisconsin; and discovered that turning 50 is OK.
I experienced these ups and downs sober, too, which isn't always easy. Happy or sad, content or frustrated, forgiving or resentful, addiction has an uncanny ability to hook onto human emotions. If we don't remain vigilant — even after long periods of recovery — we may end up taking a drink to celebrate success just as quickly as we drink to drown our sorrows. For the past five years, I've had to work harder and harder at my recovery, even though I never had a desire to drink or use drugs.
I stayed sober. And I even managed to stay sane (relatively).
None of this influenced my impetus to walk the labyrinth. I did it only because it was there and I never had walked one before. Besides, I figured it was a neat thing to do to close out '09 and the "aught" decade and get the new year and new decade off on the right foot, no pun intended. But within a step or two on the pathway, I suddenly was filled with textured imagery of highlights and lowlights marking the mileposts of the past five years — the people, places and things that defined these years and the emotions spawned by living through it all. Deliberately but without expectations, I trekked in a spiral ever closer to the center of the circle and, in my mind's eye, saw myself moving beyond these years and everything they were about, good or bad.
Only for a moment did I stand at the center, staring at the pile of pebbles that other sojourners had deposited as markers of their own journeys. In that moment, I realized how far I have come in my personal pilgrimage of these past few years. And I was filled with gratitude. I turned and slowly retraced my steps, seeing myself walking into a new year and a fresh decade ripe with endless opportunities and, without a doubt, perplexing challenges.
On New Year's Eve, my experiences were uniquely mine, but I did not walk that labyrinth by myself. A fellow traveler was with me. It was a reminder that I did not get this far by myself. Like life, recovery is not meant to be experienced alone. And that's a potent affirmation of what lies ahead in the rest of my journey through the labyrinth of life.
William Moyers is the vice president of foundation relations for the Hazelden Foundation and the author of "Broken," his best-selling memoirs, and "A New Day, A New Life." Please send your questions to William Moyers at wmoyers@hazelden.org. To find out more about William Moyers and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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