Hitting Rock Bottom…

What does it mean to hit rock bottom? Different people must have different absolute hard ground, and yet, for those who have felt the impact (or need to), the range of experiences that others classify as “rock bottom” has nothing to do with the important elements of the moment. What one classifies as rock bottom is absolutely irrelevant to the experience itself.

From various TV shows and other media (I know not which), we encounter plenty of different definitions for the unbreakable absolute zero. One says, “When you’re lifting the lid on that dumpster for the first time, you know you’ve hit rock bottom” (Movie—Pay it Forward, paraphrased). Some movies depict characters resorting to prostitution for drugs (Movie--Requiem for a Dream). There could be plenty of others. But one other perspective stood out to me recently concerning great falls from grace. A man says to his friend, “If you’re waiting to hit rock bottom, it’s never going to happen. You’re never going to see a bright light, or hear a heavenly voice tell you when to stop.” (Media—again, I know not which.) Here, the character means that “hitting the rock bottom” is a decision, a personal realization and resulting action, that has nothing to do with raw materials. Instead it deals with whatever objects people deem real, with whatever things on which people place value.

What does it mean, then, for you to hit rock bottom? And what should you expect to find: nirvana or the sheol?

I’ve decided I’m going. I’ll make the trip. I want to find out the truth. I’m going to slap that cold hard clay with my own naked butt. I’m tired of working so hard to appear above reproach. I’m sick of trying to keep my sin from affecting others. It was, of course, a folly and an illusion in the first place. Hitting rock bottom, I’ll finally know what’s real in my life, and I’ll live for it.

Wait a minute! you say. We’re talking about two very different bottoms! For one, we are allowing ourselves to face real consequences, and this feels like giving up things that are safe and comfortable, and trading them for something like a cold, barren uninhabitable desert. For the other, we are accepting exceedingly glaring compromises of dignity and morality. “Rock bottom” could mean raising my hands in the air, empty and willing to receive, or it could mean impulsively punching my hands through a glass floor that I had always walked on, wondering what lay beneath.

Whatever the case may be, these two bottoms are somehow connected. Rock bottom, really, is the glass floor that I decide not to punch through, and it’s also the façade and rags that I leave behind in search of something new. It’s both. I give up the meaningless things I had, and I decide not to destroy something I trust.

So I will give away my performance lifestyle with its focus on impressing people, and embrace the fact that I’m a cool guy, as is, without all the extras.

Therefore, if I were a truly excellent, healthy, and productive human being, I would do the following things:

1. Work out at the gym four times a week.
2. Join a therapy group for addiction.
3. Study daily on MS Access to excel at my job.
4. Maintain a M__f___ing blog.
5. Buy a plant, and practice caring for it daily.
6. Practice reading Spanish out loud, daily
7. Practice new music on the flute.
8. Read an excellent book.
9. Answer questions in old therapy workbooks.
10. Call all my friends.
11. Write Christmas cards to all my friends.
12. Lock my laptop computer in my car every evening.
13. Clean my room.
14. Organize my mail.
15. Wash my laundry.
16. Learn a new recipe to cook every week.
17. Pray to a higher power.

I hereby swear never to do any of these preceding activities until I hit rock bottom.

Philpirrip