If we didn’t know who Thomas Edison was, the quote about opportunity here might be dismissed as either a joke or irrelevant. It is funny, in the sense that most of us can easily identify ourselves in it. Who among us hasn’t wanted to steer clear of some activity we perceived as too difficult, requiring too much time, or one for which we could see no clear outcome or reward? Too much work, and we shake our heads and find something else to do, something with a more immediate payoff that we’re more inclined to choose.

In recovery, there’s a whole lot of hard work involved. That much we know for sure. What the old-timers in the 12-step rooms say about finding a silver lining amidst all this pain and turmoil may be a little hard for some of us to believe, let alone be able to recognize. Yet, as with most truths, there is a sound basis for their optimism. Nothing succeeds like success, and these folks have been there. What may look like an arduous task or daunting problem or issue to us at the present time may, in fact, turn out to be a golden opportunity in disguise. Okay, right now it looks like overalls and work, but we have to train ourselves to see beyond the denim and dirt to what may be a transformation into something productive and rewarding.

Still unconvinced? Don’t worry, you’re among good company. It takes a great deal of practice and, yes, a whole lot of hard work, to be able to see much beyond what’s right in front of us today. Since none of us is a mind reader that takes some doing. Some would call it taking a leap of faith. But we don’t have to be religious to put stock in something that we know we have to work towards, but also realize that there’s no sure outcome at the other end.

We can, however, begin to realize that we will learn a great deal whatever the outcome. If we try something and the results either do not meet our expectations or we find that along the way our goals have changed, guess what? We have learned something. If we attempt a difficult task and succeed, guess what? We have learned something. In each case, we can take what we’ve learned and modify our recovery plan going forward, changing our goals, eliminating some and adding others.

In the process, we should also take some time to look back at what we’ve already accomplished and allow the fact that we have put in a great deal of overall dirt work to get where we are today. Doesn’t that make us feel good? It should also motivate us, spurring us on to tackle ever more challenging tasks and creating what are called stretch goals for ourselves.

Suppose we’ve not had a lot of success in crafting goals or executing our plans? Suppose we’re just starting out on our recovery journey and are filled with uncertainty and fear about our abilities as well as our judgment? Don’t worry. We’ve all been there. Start by discussing what we think and feel with our 12-step sponsor. Listen to what our fellow 12-step group members have to say in the rooms. Read all we can and become more knowledgeable about the process of recovery. Then, start with something small, a goal that we believe we can achieve. It can be as simple as living today in sobriety, taking it one day at a time.

That’s really what recovery is. This is a process, and we live it day by day. We cannot live tomorrow’s day, for that is not yet here. We can’t relive yesterday, because that tomorrow is long past. When we center ourselves in the here and now and open our eyes and hearts and minds to what is available to us now, we may just find that opportunities are all around us.

Don’t we all know about walls that hem us in? Before we entered recovery, we may have felt trapped in the walls of our own addiction. Admittedly, we did this to ourselves, but that certainly didn’t make it any less confining or do anything to ameliorate the pain we felt.

Even when we went through treatment and then entered recovery, we weren’t totally out of the woods. All of a sudden we were expected, or we expected of ourselves, to know what to do and when to do it. That was probably the last thing that we actually experienced. What we did know was that there was a whole lot of uncertainty going on with us. We not only didn’t know how to react to these uncomfortable feelings, but we still had to deal with the recurring cravings and urges, the sense of failure and hopelessness that so often accompanies the first few days and weeks of sobriety.

What we did was to follow the recommendations we had been given. We went to our 12-step meetings. We got our sponsor. We started the hard work of learning about the principles of recovery, and began the even harder work of doing the Twelve Steps.

Still, for many of us, it may have felt like we were still surrounded by walls, even hemmed in by them. There seemed to be no bright and shiny future. Everything seemed dulled, routine, without hope or promise. Sure, others, including our sponsor, said that these feelings would fade over time. Maybe we believed them, maybe we didn’t. All we knew was that it was like we couldn’t get a breath of fresh air, like life seemed stale.

We were encouraged to find something that interested us and then to pursue it, given, of course, that the pursuit or goal would be conducive to our long-term recovery. If we listened to this recommendation and did something about it, we may have found that there was actually some truth to it. We may have begun to find some interest in a person or activity outside our own immediate problems or concerns.

Now, fast forward to our being actively involved in pursuing a goal that really captivates us. What this goal is doesn’t matter, as long as it helps us grow and keep moving forward in our recovery. Maybe the goal involves creating a business from the ground-up. It could be building or buying a house, deciding to get married and have a family, traveling to different places, embarking on a new career, or going back to school.

The key question to ask ourselves is: Does this pursuit really jazz us? Do we find ourselves smiling at the thought of being with those people, doing that activity, immersing ourselves in the learning process? If so, we are finding our bliss. And when we begin to find our bliss, those self-confining walls will start to fall away around us.

There never were really any walls to begin with, only in the figurative sense. We will find that our life in recovery can be whatever we want it to be. Prepare to do the hard work required to attain whatever goal we set for ourselves, but also recognize that there’s a great deal of happiness – bliss, if you will – involved in the actual pursuit of those goals.

Joseph Conrad had it right after all. Not only will the walls disappear, but the universe will show us opening doors everywhere we turn. In recovery and in life, isn’t that what we’re all really after?

We look at the world around us, but do we really see? If we do use our eyes, are we allowing our thoughts to deceive us about what is real and what is not? Are we discerning in our view of what is before us, or are we just drifting along, seeing nothing?

Think of the sense of sight. It is a wondrous gift, really, but one that we so often take for granted. We see, but we don’t really see. What do we mean by that? Let’s look at how we neglect this precious sense.

Think of how we ignored the signs and symptoms of our addiction for so long. The proof was there before us, if we only looked with our eyes to see it. The mirror could have shown us the haggard face, sunken eyes, emaciated frame, the hyperactivity or glassy stare. But, of course, we could not see it then.

Maybe our loved ones and friends tried to convince us to take a look at what we’d become and we dismissed them. We couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see what they were seeing. That would have meant taking off the blinders and assessing the mess we’d made of our lives. We weren’t ready for that, so we continued seeing without seeing. We were sleepwalking through life, and that’s all we cared to do.

Somewhere along the way, however, those of us who decided to kick addiction and embrace recovery took off the blinders. We entered treatment and, as part of the healing process, began to learn how the disease of addiction had clouded our vision and kept us prisoners in a self-induced labyrinth for so long. It was, no doubt, painful to see. We had to acknowledge what we’d done as a result of our addiction. We had to admit our responsibility for our actions. Then, we began to learn about triggers and how to identify and recognize them, how to cope with cravings and urges, and how to practice healthier behaviors so that we may live a life of sobriety.

All of this involved learning to see, how to use our eyes. The reality that we first saw may have been pretty frightening. We may have felt a great deal of shame and guilt over our past. But we also learned that we are the architects of our lives. We can choose what to do based on our resolve to live a life in recovery. What we see now is likely greatly changed from what we saw back then. We have learned how to use our eyes, not only to see what is real right now, but also to see what is possible for us.

As a means of double-checking whether we are really using our eyes, we can verify with our sponsor and close allies what we see. Let’s take the example of us reacting with confidence during times of stress, utilizing our coping strategies and making use of the counsel and advice of our trusted others. If we are truly seeing through the eyes of reality, others will acknowledge our progress and comment upon it. If we need a little help in being able to recognize truth from falseness, there again, our sponsor and allies can help us see with our eyes and discern the reality instead of the untruths.

Be willing to take action when we realize that we are deluding ourselves, preferring, perhaps, to take momentary comfort in what is not real. Be willing to confront our self-deception and shoulder the responsibility to keep moving forward in our recovery, even though it may feel strange to us at first. Remember, we get better at being able to recognize and overcome challenges the more we tackle them. It’s all part of using our eyes and doing the work of recovery.

Many of us in recovery find that peace is an elusive state. Some of us equate peace or a peaceful calm as something we could only enjoy when we were blessed out, under the influence of our drug of choice. We mistakenly believed that peace came at the bottom of a bottle or when our horse came in and we hit it big. Instead, we find that, now that we’ve chosen sobriety and no longer dull our minds and blunt life, we may not know what peace really is at all, or how to find it.

Let’s take a cue from Mother Theresa and start off with a smile. It’s such a simple thing, a smile. What amount of effort does it take to curl up the ends of our mouth, like reaching upward to the heavens? Amazingly, for those of us who’ve had little reason or desire to smile, doing so takes quite a bit of effort. It’s something as alien to us as flying and, since we’re not birds, we certainly can’t fly.

But we can smile. There are 43 muscles in the face and, if we know our anatomy, we know that most of them are controlled by the seventh cranial nerve, which is also known as the facial nerve. This nerve exits the cerebral cortex and emerges from the skull just ahead of the ears. Then it splits into five primary branches that then reach different areas of the face and activate the muscles that allow our faces to twist and turn and contort into different types of expressions. That’s enough of the anatomy refresher course.

While there are some that say it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, one person’s broad smile may actually require more muscles than someone else’s little smirk. But who’s to tell and after all, does it really matter how many muscles you use? The important point to remember is that when we exercise these muscles in order to produce a smile, they become quite used to the activity. It gets easier to do the more we do it.

This is a quick suggestion to get us going. Think of the funniest incident or joke or conversation you can remember. Allow the thought to roll around in your mind and if you feel your cheeks start to lift up and the corners of your mouth starting to follow, you are on your way to a healthy smile. And what about that feeling of a bit of joy that accompanies your smile? That’s what you want. That’s your little share of peace in the moment.

Other ways to teach ourselves to smile include being with people that make us happy, whose company we enjoy. We can also take in a funny comedy, borrow a joke book from the public library, or watch old sitcoms on TV (since there are always reruns). We all do have a funny bone, although it doesn’t appear in any anatomy books. Laughing begets smiling begets a feeling of peace and tranquility, a sense that, just for now, all’s right with us. And that’s all we really need, isn’t it, a chance for a few moments to sit back and appreciate the little things?

Go on, stretch ourselves. Get into the practice of finding something every day that makes us want to smile. Let that smile extend as wide as we can, even if we have to practice doing this in the mirror. We may just be surprised at that beaming individual peering back at us. Who knows, we may even like what we see. This is surely someone we want to get to know better. Others will as well.

We’re all students, whether we think of ourselves as such or not. Does this seem like a farfetched statement? It really isn’t, and here’s why. From the moment that we open our eyes as infants and begin to see, we are learning new things. We come into this world a blank canvas, with no thoughts or understanding of what’s before us. We have a clean slate, if you will, and create our own destiny by virtue of our actions.

But we have to start somewhere. We don’t have innate knowledge of how to do this or that, or even how to think and speak. We learn this, day by day, little by little, with many starts and stops and detours along the way. We are often frustrated, disappointed, hurt or sad by our inability to get what we think we want when we want it. We also are frequently amazed, delighted, thrilled or happy when we do learn something new and have a new experience.

Doesn’t this sound like our newfound lives in sobriety? We have gone through a great deal of difficulty getting to the point of being clean and sober. The obstacles we’ve had to overcome have included getting past that self-denial we’ve so long maintained. We had to acknowledge and accept that we had a problem and ask for and accept the help to overcome it. That certainly wasn’t easy, but it was very definitely a growing experience. We learned a lot from these lessons. And none of it came about without first living through it. That’s the only way we could possibly have understood the lesson.

Think of our recovery this way. When we were in the hard cold grip of our addiction, we couldn’t see anything else but the status quo. All we wanted was to continue as we were, left alone to do as we pleased, no interference from others. If we’re honest now, we will admit that we lied to ourselves and others for a good long time about our "situation." Once we got to the point where continuing on that path of self-destruction made no more sense whatsoever and we made the decision to get clean and sober, we already learned a tremendous life lesson.

Okay, so some of us had to learn that life lesson a few times before it sunk in. We may have relapsed once, twice, ten or twenty times before we finally "took" to recovery. These are still life lessons that we have learned. They also happened in succession, although some of them may have occurred simultaneously.

Looking at life as a series of lessons to be lived in order to be understood is instructive in another way as well. It’s a proactive and positive approach to healing. And we are all about healing in recovery. As we learn from our life lessons, we grow in our abilities and we cement our foundation of recovery. That, in itself, should be reason enough for us to try to find some lesson in everything we experience in life – the good, the bad and the in-between. It’s all part of life, and life is what we make of it.