The look in my friend’s eyes would best be described as “Desperate”. There was a hopelessness combined with fear, frustration, and covered with anguish. He was hurting and he was confused. He had tried everything he knew to try and he had done everything he knew to do.

He wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to change but he knew that it hurt too much to stay the same. His situation was one that was best likened to the skunk screwing the porcupine…. “He hadn’t got all that he wanted, but he had got all that he could take.”

As I watched my friend reveal his soul through the difficulties of his predicament, my heart began to break for him. The feeling I had for him was similar when my children have a problem that I know how to solve, but it is not my cross to bear and the pain of watching them go through it hurts me significantly.

No sooner than I could share pity with my long-term comrade, he said the magic words. He uttered the phrase that is so often synonymous with the first step of recovery. He put together the most beautiful string of words that can ever be strewn before the grace of God reveals itself and forward progress begins. My buddy looked at me, with tears in his eyes, and said,

“I don’t know.”

“I just don’t know.”

“I don’t know what to do. I’m out of options. I’m out of ideas”

He was at rock bottom. Ground zero- where the bullshit takes a walk and the real work begins. His life was just about to start taking shape. Inside, I couldn’t have been happier for the adversity he was facing. This was going to end well.

It’s not until the notion that I can fix myself with the same thinking that got me in the predicament, to begin with, is completely squashed before I can accept help and expect any sort of change to occur. It is not until I have exhausted every plan, flexed every fiber of my ego, and contrived every possible and relatively painless scenario before I can allow myself to recover.

“I don’t know” is one of the most beautiful places on earth. It’s a crappy view from the first-person perspective but from the outside-looking-in its a marvelous spectacle.

If you are spiraling out of control, my prayer is that you find bottom quickly, painfully, and hit with a thud. I hope that upon regaining consciousness you find that your only options seem to be none, and your only complete sentence to be “I don’t know.”

Knowing too little is seldom a problem when compared to knowing too much.

Peace, Love, and all things Beef related,

Beefcake