The Tree Ring Principle

What I'm most thankful for today.

A lot of messages will land in your inbox today from companies professing gratitude for their customers. It’s nice—my fifth grade teacher “discouraged” using that word, so I almost never do—but it is nice, because we all like to feel appreciated.

There should be no ceiling on expressions of thanks.

I had considered writing about how I’m thankful you’re here, reading these wandering words when you could be doing literally anything else. This would lead into a bullet-pointed list of other stuff I appreciate about life and the world at large. Finish with an open-ended question (as I’m known to do), then put a fork in the turkey, baby.

But, I have this pesky visual I’ve been clinging to for years. It’s helped me prioritize, make decisions, say no when I need to, and generally make sense of relationships. My “tree ring principle” prescribes order to the way I share my energy.

Outward.

The center ring is me. Next one out is my wife, then our kids and grandkids. The next ring is our parents, then extended family, then friends.

And so it continues, until you start to encounter things that matter, but not really: jobs, money, achievements. Outward and outward until you get to stuff that might only matter today: To-do lists, conflicts, setbacks.

What I like about the tree ring principle, is that it acknowledges we can’t really care about everything equally, so we might as well get our lists straight.

When I was drinking, the center of my cross-section was fuzzy. Early versions of the tree ring principle had me, Lisa, and the kids all lumped together in the core. For a person carrying a lot of guilt around selfish behaviors and broken promises, it felt like the right thing to do.

Inward.

Quitting drinking meant putting myself first. Sounds counterintuitive, right? But—ask a sober person—that is the only way it works. Early in the process, and every day after, there must be an acknowledgement that we can’t help others if we don’t put on our own oxygen masks first.

That’s why now, if you zoom way, way in on my mental image, there’s a single word from which every ring radiates:

Sobriety.

While I’m grateful for my family, my running, my career, this project, you as a reader, and a thousand other things today… None of it works without my sobriety. So, I return there again and again, to give thanks for a decision I made almost four years ago—to hang up the masks and begin to know myself.

The Finish Line

Accepting that a tree needs its core to survive, here’s that open-ended question you were waiting for… What is your center ring? Zoom in farther, to the tiniest speck. Really squint. What’s the single thing on which all else hinges?

Give thanks for it today.

Run lightly,
-mike

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