Here’s the short Twitter version: Why #walk4addiction? Symbolizes the long road of #recovery: one step at a time, no #shortcuts, helps to be with others on journey with you.
and for a little more detail:
On Wednesday we drove to Michigan and on Thursday we drove back. We went for a nephew’s Bar-Mitzvah. Driving with kids meant multiple stops and therefore almost twelve hours each way. The roadtrip made me think of this analogy, one must keep on moving, driving onward, keeping track of milemarkers and milestones.
On Friday we planned to prepare for Shabbat, but Raizy ended up spending most of the day in the ER, coming up just minutes before candle-lighting. This, too, is a recovery metaphor: Often people struggle to make that long journey, going through many steps and milestones, only to experience a set-back when you reach an important destination.
When you travel long distances, and you have hundreds of miles ahead, it can be painful when the mile-markers pass so slowly. But that’s how you get there – one mile marker at a time.
Tanya, the classic Chassidic text by the Alter Rebbe of Chabad, is also called “the Long Shorter Way”. Often in life, the long more difficult route ends up being shorter. The Talmud tells a story of a Rabbi Joshua who made the trip to Jerusalem. Close to the city he came to a fork in the road. There was no GPS back then, nor Google Maps, so he asked a kid playing there for directions to Jerusalem.
The kid answered, “This way is short but long, the other way is long but short.” Rabbi Joshua was a bit confused, but set out on the first path. Indeed, it was a quick path to the city, but as he got close, the way was blocked with thorns and an inaccessible entry point. So he retraced his steps back to the fork and took the other route. True to the kid’s description, it was a longer, roundabout route, but once you got to the city – you were in. (Believe it or not, the Berenstain Bears have a similar message in one of their books).