Oscar Buzz

A year ago, I sat with my wife and three daughters in a Middle Eastern restaurant in Greenwich Village eating baba ganoush and celebrating my wife’s birthday. Somehow during the evening we got onto the topic of the upcoming Academy Awards and after recapping a few of the best movies each of us had seen, the discussion morphed into a series of Oscar-inspired family elections. It was all very informal, with nominations made for different categories and straw-poll votes taken casually around the table.

Like the Oscars themselves, there were a number of obscure categories—the best set-design equivalents—such as most-thoughtful-of-everyone’s-bathroom-time or best sense of humor, though there were a couple of sleeper categories that were more meaningful than they looked, like most generous and easiest-to-get-along-with.

In what I thought was a stunning victory, I was voted the most spiritual of the family. Needless to say, I was also voted the most annoying and then the most immature, among other titles I acquired that evening.

Of course, I wasn’t the only winner. My wife was elected as the family’s most difficult to deal with (even though it was her birthday, no favoritism was shown), while at the same time copping the title of most supportive. My daughters too, garnered a variety of prizes such as most intellectual, friendliest, and best fashion sense. These, of course, were awards I had little or no interest in, though I duly cast my vote for each nomination.

The votes, by and large, were unanimous, with little discussion and no minority dissent, though I did ask for a recount on the most immature vote, thereby validating my election as most annoying.

But the vote on most spiritual actually touched me. Spirituality is not something I bathe myself in, yet it is, and always has been, a powerful current running through my life.

In many ways, that particular election night was like a mini-inventory for each of us, providing a series of playful snapshots of our weaknesses and strengths as seen through the eyes of those closest to us, and while many of the titles I won that evening have faded from memory, most spiritual and most immature have stayed with me throughout the year.

Trying to get better in weak areas and trying to enhance personal strengths is a hallmark of recovery from alcoholism, and having these two areas to work on throughout the year has been a beneficial thing. I haven’t set down any hard and fast resolutions relative to either, but having them in the background has enabled me to work on them patiently, almost subliminally, as I go about my business on a day-to-day basis.

Getting more spiritual or becoming less immature are not aspects of my personality that I can address through a headlong assault. They are, instead, aspects that have to be built, like trust, on a piecemeal basis through a continuing series of minimalist choices that present themselves in each day’s march. Like deciding not to engage in a useless argument with my 16-year-old daughter about what she should or shouldn’t watch on TV while she is supposedly studying for a history test (by the way, she was my nominee for most immature, though there was no second), or perhaps by taking a moment before bed to meditate for a moment and offer up a prayer of gratitude instead of simply watching Jay Leno on The Tonight Show and pulling the covers up over my head.

To date, my progress has been slow but steady. It’s been exactly a year since our trip to Greenwich Village and while I’m not sure just what we’re going to do tonight to celebrate my wife’s birthday, if it comes to any kind of an election I’m hoping maybe to win most improved, or, at the very least, most willing to change.