What Is This Unearthly Thing Called Clarity?

Alan Watts. Thich Nhat Hanh. New tunes.

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I can't remember if I experienced an actual pink cloud thing, one where I gained instant access to a happy and unencumbered life and walked through the world with a wide-eyed smile and shinier skin. Maybe it happened in the first few months, but I can't recall a specific moment or meeting when a Higher Power pushed me in front of a mirror to marvel at my own glow.

I do remember a sense of decent-sized accomplishment after I safely landed in Year 2 of sobriety. I found a new sturdiness then—I could trust myself. I had access to different modes of emotional reactions, able to process many uniquely stressful moments, from a baby throwing up in my beard to the death of a parent. And there were wild dreams, for sure, most of them brilliantly good.

But I think many alcoholics expect to be brained by some spiritual sledgehammer—the oft-cited ‘moment of clarity’. Mine was more subtle and uneventful than that—and also unwelcome. Because my new "clarity" revealed to me that the sad pattern of my public messes and infernal putridity was not as charming as I'd allowed myself to believe. ("Why did I think it was okay to piss in elevators?"). It turns out I wasn't getting away with anything—people were on to me. They either tolerated my stink or stayed away.

Today, in Year 8, I'd define clarity as something like "clearness but not clear." But after this week, that has changed. I read This Is It by Alan Watts and found a paragraph about clarity that feels more like home.

“Clarity—the disappearance of problems—suggests light, and in moments of such acute clarity, there may be the physical sensation of light penetrating everything.”

The disappearance of problems—what does that feel like?