I was spending the weekend with my brother at a good friend’s place. We had a hell of a time as we always do, just chilling in his backyard pool, talking, listening to music and cooking wood-fired pizza in his garden oven.
Usually we have red wine on these pizza nights – and usually in abundance. But this time, naturally I didn’t partake in this part of the tradition. Although it didn’t affect the night as a whole and wasn’t really a problem for me, I did notice one thing.
They went to pick the wine for the night down in the cellar. I went with them, while obviously not of much use – I wasn’t drinking the wine, so what would my opinion matter, right? This gave a sting of sadness. I felt left out. Not by them, but by the nature of my own choice. Suddenly a significant portion of this tradition of ours was off limits to me. This hit a little harder than anticipated – but to my surprise, it also passed fast.
This made me think.
I count two threads. I call the first the consequences of my choices, and the second the losses caused by my choices. Standing in the cellar with my brother and friend, the consequence was immediate: The selection process and related conversation became irrelevant to me. But as the night went on, I realized that while the consequence was real, it wasn’t actually a loss. The night didn’t suffer, we all had a lot of fun, and yes, they enjoyed their red wine and talked about it, but I found the conversation about it didn’t really matter to me either. The consequence never turned into a loss.
There is no denying that stopping drinking comes with a lot of consequences, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the same amount of losses. I’ve observed the dynamics many times now, and although the line often drifts, they are not equal. The more time goes by, the more I count consequences, but not losses.