Take it Slow

A little “Patience” with Chris Cornell

On my brother’s recommendation, I’ve started listening to Chris Cornell, and I can’t stop. I don’t think I can adequately describe the way he sings, so you’ll have to listen for yourself if he’s not yet on your radar. It’s like he opens a whole world of music you didn’t realize was there if you’ve lived your whole life without really listening to him as I’ve done. One of the songs on the playlist my brother shared with me is Cornell’s cover of a Guns N’ Rose song: “Patience”. It’s one of many songs I’ve heard as a cover before hearing the original version, and I think the experience of hearing someone else sing it before hearing the original has some benefit to understanding the song. You hear words changed or emphasized in different ways, notice certain phrases drawn out or sped up, and hear the ways in which emotions play into the vocals. Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” feels like more of a lament than the Nine Inch Nails anger-infused original of the song, and they’re both so right. My dad recently informed me of a bizarre fight involving soup and pillows between Sinead O’Connor and Prince due to the former’s immense success with the latter’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”. Hers a heartbroken cry of loneliness and his a bit more of a valiant rhythm and blues ballad. Those are just two examples, but you get the point. 

I think both the Chris Cornell and Guns N’ Roses versions of “Patience” offer something for a recovery translation. The shared lyrics touch on the virtue of patience that can be so hard to put into practice, but the cover and original seem to convey different experiences with the practice of being patient. Guns N’ Roses has a lighter melody and a sort of reflective embrace of the acceptance required for patience. The singer has complete trust in the good that will come from waiting; this is the patience we tap into when things are going well enough that hope isn’t hard to see. The “one, two, three, four” count off and Axl Rose’s whistling tune at the start of the song establish a light-hearted mood. I can’t whistle, but my observation of whistlers tells me that the practice, akin to humming, usually denotes a pleasant state of mind. Rose’s whistling gives me the image of some guy wandering along in the woods, on his way somewhere nice and knowing the woods will end soon. That’s the vibe of this version of “Patience”: a smiling while biding time kind of vibe. The Cornell cover, on the other hand, explores the harder emotions that can accompany patience. 

Chris Cornell sings sad so well, and this song is no exception. His voice and the music are slower and heavier. His version feels darker - not in a sinister way, but in the way it feels when you’re so deep in the woods that there’s no clear evidence they ever end. There’s no fun count off to the start of Cornell’s singing, just the solemn melody of waiting until he begins: Shed a tear ‘cause I’m missin’ you. I’m still alright to smile. Girl, I think about you everyday now. This “still alright to smile” is the kind of smile you get from the kid who just fell on the playground and tries to look brave even though everything hurts and every bone in his body only wants to cry forever. These opening lines give us the hardship at the heart of this song as well as the courage in his patience. Despite being apart, the speaker has someone whose place in his heart is so strong that it carries him even in the sadness of being alone. He’s able to recognize that even in her absence and his terrible loneliness, he’s still alright or at least knows that he will be. And knowing that is enough. He can smile not because he’s experiencing the relief from pain, but because he trusts that this relief will come to him. And trust in itself is a bit of relief. 

This ability to trust without evidential assurance has been on my mind a lot in the last week or so. I started writing this essay partly because the song seemed to be voicing how I felt before I even understood the feelings, and in the days after I began writing, two different friends I’ve made in the program - we’ll call them Vermont Friend and Dorchester Friend- expressed their own experiences with the concept of patience and trust. Their shared thoughts reflected a lot of what has been running through my head and what I hear in Chris Cornell’s song. I’ll come back to these encounters/conversations, since I’ve realized that their places in my own experience contribute to my understanding of how to better practice patience in my life.  

Patience for the singer involves the waiting time until he can truly be with his beloved. It’s a song about love, about trusting in the lasting quality of that love and in the fact that this love will be there for him when he reaches a place where he is able to be with her both physically and emotionally. Whether he’s on a trip of some kind or just emotionally incapable of being present to love in the way he knows he can be, the singer comes from a place where he knows that, despite this current distance, he will reach his love in time and with patience. 

For a recovery translation, the patience we need involves the waiting time before we experience the promises of recovery. These promises - fulfilled sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly - require not only a change of circumstances in our lives, but more crucially a change in our perspective. And this change in perspective comes when we’re able to practice patience with complete, unselfish trust in the plan of a Higher Power. When we’re in the beginning of recovery - the first days or months, and sometimes even the early years - we can find it hard to trust in the providence of some greater plan at work in our lives. We’re still very much living in the wreckage of the past; we’re occupying the dark space in which the light has been promised to us but still remains largely out of view. 

In my conversation with Vermont Friend, I thought about how this process is kind of like our experience in hiking a mountain with the promise of a breathtaking view at the peak. I think this comparison popped into my head because of the Vermont factor, and my own time in Vermont was spent largely in the company of mountains. If we’re on this particular hike, the beginning may not be overly steep, but it’s daunting in its distance from our goal. We may know the mileage and ascent ahead of us, and we may have a vague idea how long the hike will take depending on our level of physical fitness and the conditions of nature on the day we’ve chosen to hike; but the reality is that we have no exact knowledge of how the climb will go. We’re also still so close to the bottom that abandoning the hike entirely at the early stages doesn’t seem like such a waste of time or effort if we decide to bail. The patience we have to summon at this point in the hike is hard because we know we have the longest way to go and we can’t even pretend to see a glimpse of the top; but we have hope because we’re not yet tired by the effort and we’re probably motivated by our awesome choice to climb such a high mountain. We imagine the view, so we set forth on the hike. 

In the early stages, the only hope we can receive of the peak comes in the form of trail maps, scenery that is cool despite not being the view from the peak, testimonies from other travelers who have been to the top and assure us we’re on the right track, or just from the fact that there are others on the trail at all. If there are others enduring the same climb as us, there must be a reason for it. That’s how it is in recovery. Even in our worst times, we can look around the room in a meeting and remind ourselves that these other people are here for something, even if they haven’t seen it yet, so there must be something for us too. 

Cornell touches on this uncertainty: Was a time when I wasn’t sure, but you set my mind at ease. There is no doubt you’re in my heart now. Like love - like hiking - recovery doesn’t usually involve complete trust in the process right from the start. We’re human, so we need some assurance to give our trust to someone. Somehow, even when our track record in active addiction should give us every reason not to trust ourselves, we still cling onto the conviction that we’re the only ones we can trust to set our lives on track. I definitely still struggle with that. In addiction, I became so accustomed to self reliance in every matter that it felt impossible to rely on others and God in any circumstance. Self reliance sounds a lot more noble than it is; it can involve lying to manipulate others’ knowledge of a situation, delusional thinking about others’ motives or actions, isolation and despair, and other destructive practices that function as our attempts at self preservation, to remain in control of the outcome of situations, and to deal with our fears. 

But in time, something happens to set our minds at ease enough to let go of this self reliance. It might be that we see the progress of people in our lives who have put their trust completely in a higher power. It might be that we begin to trust in small matters and see small results. And it might just be that we reach a point of such desperation in our discontent that we take a chance in trusting anyone else with the direction of our lives. However it happens, when we can begin to trust, we can begin to experience the calm and ease of mind that accompany it. 

Dorchester Friend said something about this development of trust and the patience required of it. I ran into him as he was leaving work and asked him how everything was going. Selfishly, I asked partly because I was mid-run and my legs were begging for a break. I also hadn’t really caught up with this guy in a while, so I think God prompted both my asking and his response. He said something about the willingness to believe in a solution and a higher power that really resonated with me. Previously, when he’d been struggling to stay sober, he’d been willing to believe that a higher power could save him. He said that something was different this time; now, he’d somehow crossed the line from being willing to believe to just believing without a doubt. Patience is now something that just comes naturally to him even in the most frustrating circumstances. Maybe he’s living in pretty unchanged life circumstances, but his sense of the hand of a higher power in his affairs has strengthened to a point when he’s able to accept the now and have patience in the process when faced with difficulties. His mind has been set at ease, and it really helped me to hear it.

I hear this sense of being eased in the refrain: Said, woman, take it slow; it’ll work itself out fine. All we need is just a little patience. Said, sugar, make it slow, And we’ll come together fine. All we need is just a little patience. He’s asking for patience from both himself and his woman because he trusts in the process. Because they trust in each other, they’ve eased each other’s minds, but they still need patience because they live in the waiting time before they’re truly together. It’s funny to think of it in this way, because the impatient part of me wants to just point out that Cornell and his woman should just throw whatever’s holding them apart aside and get together. They know they love each other, so why wait? 

It’s the same with how I think about recovery sometimes. I have this vision of how my life can be both in terms of life circumstances and with how I feel, so I want those results now - or at least in a more timely manner than they’re happening. I also know that there are certain things I can do to feel that I’m speeding up the process, but something holds me back. I think that’s trust. It’s not perfect, but I’m working on it. I’m learning to trust that there’s a reason for the waiting, a time I’ve been given to become the kind of person whose life is enough even without the circumstances I sometimes think will make me happier or feel whole. I recently read Drop the Rock, a book on the sixth and seventh steps in the program, and there’s a prayer in it that’s been helping me with this trust in my higher power. I say a version of this prayer throughout the day when the doubt or discontent strikes: “God, I don’t care how I sound or how I look, who my partner is or where I live. I only know that I don’t want to feel this way anymore. In your time and on your terms, please remake me as you will.” I usually add “where I work” to the list too since that’s my other area of uncertainty. The prayer doesn’t give me any answers or fix any other areas of lacking I feel sometimes pretty acutely in my life, but it does assure me that these circumstances - work, home, love, appearance - shouldn’t be factors that determine my worth in life. They’re definitely worth something; I think everyone wants to live somewhere that feels like their own space, to work at a job that brings meaning to their life, to have someone they love, and to love themselves no matter how they present to others. These things are important, and I’m learning to entrust them to God and trust that he has a plan for how they’ll look in my life. I’m just not privy to his timeline, and that’s my issue. I think I’d rather know I have to wait exactly 57 minutes for a train to come than sit in the station having no clue when the next one is coming even if it’s only a few minutes away. I used to think that just meant I like certainty, but I think it also means I lack the trust required of patience. 

Cornell sings what patience looks like for him: I sit here on the stairs, ‘Cause I’d rather be alone. If I can’t have you right now, I’ll wait, dear. Sometimes, I get so tense. But I can’t speed up the time. But you know, love, there’s one more thing to consider. I think in recovery, once we really trust that true happiness, fulfillment and love will only ever come to be if we stay sober and on the right path, the lure of our former substances of choice fades. Even in the sometime misery of waiting, we’d rather wait alone for the promises of recovery than return to the delusion and disconnect of addiction. When we finally experience the joy of real connection, we see that anything we thought was happiness or connection in addiction pales in comparison to what we can have if we wait. If we can’t have it right now, we’ll wait. When we experience pain in recovery, it’s this trust in something real that keeps us in the waiting even when we want to speed up time. These lines touch on this same alone-on-the-stairs kind of feeling: I’ve been walkin’ the streets at night, Just tryin’ to get it right. It’s hard to see with so many around. You know I don’t like bein’ stuck in the crowd. And the streets don’t change, but maybe the names…I ain’t got time for the game ‘cause I need you. I like this street imagery; it reminds me of the way I used to feel when I walked my dog around the neighborhood block as her last outing before bed. The experience of being outside in the dark amidst all these windows filled with light - even if there were other night walkers out there - gave me this sense of solitude unlike other kinds I’d felt. It’s something about being out in the dark when you know others are inside in lit rooms they call home. You know you’ll get to a point eventually when you’re indoors in the light, but you have to finish your walk first. I picture the singer lost in a crowd of people all wandering about in their own waiting times or trying to speed up the waiting in their various ways. The game he mentions is the attempt to speed up the waiting through self-reliant means: alcohol, impulse buys, dating apps, material pleasures and distractions, etc. Things that aren’t bad by nature, but harmful when used as distractions from life. Anything to avoid the waiting. The streets don’t change, but maybe the names reflects the idea that these various different attempts to escape the waiting - habits that echo the modus vivendi of our persons in addiction - are all the same at heart. They’re streets that look like shortcuts but lead us to a state of being lost or drifted from the path we’re meant to be on. The long, sometimes lonely road is the one we have to stay on even if we don’t have a GPS telling us exactly how long we’ll have to wait in the uncertainty. 

If we do what Axl Rose and Chris Cornell repeat in the chorus - take it slow - and look around, we’ll find the pieces of hope that will strengthen our trust and give us the courage to be patient. The friend who called me to talk and the friend I saw on my run both function as hope in that way. They showed up at times when I felt alone in my thoughts and reminded me that my struggles aren’t unique to me. I heard someone share at a meeting recently who has almost ten years of sobriety and still struggles with patience because his life isn’t exactly as he expected it to be at this point in his recovery. If he hadn’t had the grace to be honest with that struggle, and if I hadn’t shown up to that meeting and really listened with an open heart, I wouldn’t have heard this further truth that we all bear the burden of patience. It’s hard to admit that we’re still waiting for everything to work itself out, and it takes trust to accept that we’re where we need to be for that to happen. And if we can really trust in those promises, even the ones that seem as if they may never come to fruition for us, we might be able to find the strength to take the next step even if it’s in the dark with only patches of light to guide us. Sometimes it just takes a little patience for the next light to arrive and assure us there’s something real beneath our feet and a greater light ahead. If we can make it slow and resist the urge to order things according to our desired timelines, we’ll find that this recovery life will come together fine.