The day after I graduated college I started working. While most of my peers either took the summer off to get ready for the “real world” or took cushy corporate jobs, I took a different route. I became a laborer at my best friend’s dad’s construction company in Manhattan. If you don’t know what a laborer is, it’s exactly what it sounds like - the job covers pretty much every kind of manual labor you can think of, from destroying buildings to scraping grease off of 15-story elevator shafts. Granted, this was not exactly what I wanted to do - at the time I wanted to be a famous musician and this was going to pay the bills. I couldn’t be a sellout and get a corporate job. Not yet at least!
I worked that job for nearly two years. I was deep into addiction at that point, and it was all just grueling. I remember wondering how the “lifers” - the unionized laborers - were able to survive this life for so long. When the opportunity came for me to actually get into the union, I passed and looked elsewhere. I got a job at a music studio for a while, but that didn’t pay so I finally coalesced and got a corporate job. My music career wasn’t going anywhere because I was getting in my own way with my drug and alcohol use, and I felt I had no option but to “give up”. As it turns out, the job itself wasn’t that bad. It was my lifestyle that made everything I did unbearable.
Fast forward to now, and I still work a corporate job. I work from the comfort of my living room, and have the flexibility to continue pursuing my many passions. I am extraordinarily blessed. I look back on my life during my time as a laborer, and even when I would make the commute into my office every day hungover from the night before, and I’m filled with gratitude. I’ve come a long way. And this path has taught me the importance of experience and how it enables us to relate to others.
I know what it’s like to have to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to take the train into Manhattan to build an office building. I know what it’s like to take a train into Manhattan to sit and work in that same office building. And I know what it’s like to not have to take that train and have the freedom to work in a space that’s comfortable for me. With that experience, how can I judge? How can I judge the man who’s tired and angry all the time because he works the shittiest jobs in the city to provide for his family? How can I judge the man who is depressed and lonely because he works 16-hour days in a cubicle at a job he hates? How can I judge the man who is blind to the suffering of those around him because he has lived a life of comfort? The answer to all of these is, I can’t. I understand the pain of a physically grueling life. I understand the anguish of unfulfillment. And I understand how easy it can be to not understand other people without having lived their experience for myself.
This especially applies to recovery and sobriety. I understand what a man will do to himself and others while trapped in the throes of addiction. I understand the pain, the lack of morality, the hopelessness and the sorrow. I was that man. When I see a man or woman on the street suffering from the spiritual insanity that is addiction, I don’t think to myself, “What an asshole!” It just makes me sad. If they only what I know, that there was an easier, softer way, that life does not have to be so dark and painful, then maybe they could find the same peace that I have been so lucky to find.
I make it a daily intention to live in “the space between,” that place of understanding between different perspectives and experiences that helps me better understand those around me. I go to recovery meetings to help those who are in the same situation I once was. I started working weekends for my uncle’s construction company to remind myself of the blessings I have received (don’t get me wrong, I also love it). I will be taking my message to prisons and asylums because I understand what it’s like to be driven mad by this world.
Mark 2:17 illustrates this point beautifully:
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
As you go about your life today, remember the places you’ve been and the things you’ve experienced. Remember your pain and your sorrow. And remember that the person sitting next to you on the subway or in the coffee shop may be feeling the exact same pain you once felt.
Great reflection on the past. Great recognition of the gift of today. You walk with humility D. It’s a beautiful thing. Rock on