SOMEWHERE along the line, I bought a bill of goods that said I should never have to be uncomfortable. I bought it as a child and used the things of children to make it so. Later, I used alcohol to make it more so. Alcohol failed, and I had to find a substitute. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.
All my life, I had been a problem-solver. Usually, that activity had been directed toward keeping me comfortable. “Avoid discomfort at all costs” was my motto, and I carried it over into AA. Once I was dried out, I began using much of AA as a pain-reliever rather than a program of living. Now that I was being a good guy and staying sober, I shouldn’t have to hurt anymore. Right?
Uncomfortable, distraught, fearful? Throw another iron into the fire; run ten ways at once; don’t look–maybe it will go away. Some of those moves–or, especially some AA-oriented moves–would work long enough to pour a little oil over the troubled waters; but the calm never lasted.
One of my more sophisticated games was to try to analyze and think my way through a problem. There is no more pathetic sight in the world than I am when thinking through a problem. What I mistake for thinking is really the playback of old ideas and fears recorded on my tapes of past failures. It amounts to using gasoline to put out a fire.
My concept of positive thinking was another method I would use to make me feel good. Somehow, I got the idea that positive thinking is pretending that you aren’t where you are or that you are not hurting–and by magic, you will be where you’d like to be, and the hurt will go away. It could also be called wishful thinking, which I had practiced fervently while I was drinking. It doesn’t work–drunk or sober.
Fortunately, as with alcohol, all my quick, pat answers began to fail. Problems and situations that I thought were long solved began resurfacing. I had no answers. I didn’t even know the questions.
So started the endless journey of growing up and learning how to live sober without the need of games or chemistry.
It was amazing what I heard and what was shared with me, once I had become willing to listen with that same type of newcomer innocence that had helped sober me. People began sharing their lives, the good and the bad, with me. For the first time in my life, I was happy for others’ good fortune. Mostly, I was awed by their ability to handle painful problems and even tragedy without losing their positive attitude toward life.
Nobody has a free pass on living–that was their message. We all pay our dues; even I must, regardless of being a “good guy” and staying sober.
Pain, fear, and anxiety, whether based on fact or on fantasy, are real experiences and a part of life, and to deny them is to prolong their ordeal. Sometimes, pain is a necessary part of life if a change is to be made. But I can change only what I am first able to see and accept.
Most difficult of all, I had to accept the fact that for some problems, there are no immediate, pat answers. Only time, with its quiet change, could heal them, I found.
The AA Fellowship gave me the courage to look at my life with a little self-mercy and without the guilts, the fears, and the reruns of past failures. AA members showed me how to deal with life on its terms, without having to fight or flee from it, just by accepting it as it is.
Most of all, through their love, patience, and acceptance of me when I was unable to believe, they gave me the first glimmer of a higher power. Whether it be the God of my childhood, they told me, or my belief in the innate goodness, potential, and power of all men, it would stay with me; I would never again have to battle alone with the problems of living and growing up, nor try to escape the beautiful reality of life.
I think some input from the Twelve & Twelve is useful here. Many of us want control … we believe we are safe and more secure with control … we believe our expectations about the way our lives ‘should be’ can not just guide us but protect us from what might hurt us. Is that a childish fantasy ? Are we really in control ? And what beyond our own awareness, our attitudes and our actions do we really control? Isn’t part of the problem is that we’re imposing rules and expectations on our life instead of accepting the realities that we don’t really control or even know those rules … or that life doesn’t have rules that allow for us to control outcomes and manifest expectations … and that we , especially, with a grounding in spiritual principles … can learn to trust that our means represent whatever Light we have … and that to trust this Light allows us to have an experience of what happens when it encounters the darkness of the unknown of what the ends really are … that ends don’t justify means and that following the means of spiritual principles is enough?
Here is the passage from the Twelve & Twelve I thought was worth linking into our discussions of this post. It comes from pages 122 thru 125:
https://gugogs.org/2022/01/23/seeing-accepting-our-reality-12-12-pages-122-125/
“When A.A. was quite young, a number of eminent psychologists and doctors made an exhaustive study of a good-sized group of so-called problem drinkers. The doctors weren’t trying to find how different we were from one another; they sought to find whatever personality traits, if any, this group of alcoholics had in common. They finally came up with a conclusion that shocked the A.A. members of that time. These distinguished men had the nerve to say that most of the alcoholics under investigation were still childish, emotionally sensitive, and grandiose.
How we alcoholics did resent that verdict! We would not believe that our adult dreams were often truly childish. And considering the rough deal life had given us, we felt it perfectly natural that we were sensitive. As to our grandiose behavior, we insisted that we had been possessed of nothing but a high and legitimate ambition to win the battle of life. In the years since, however, most of us have come to agree with those doctors. We have had a much keener look at ourselves and those about us. We have seen that we were prodded by unreasonable fears or anxieties into making a life business of winning fame, money, and what we thought was leadership. So false pride became the reverse side of that ruinous coin marked “Fear.” We simply had to be number one people to cover up our deep-lying inferiorities. In fitful successes we boasted of greater feats to be done; in defeat we were bitter. If we didn’t have much of any worldly success we became depressed and cowed. Then people said we were of the “inferior” type. But now we see ourselves as chips off the same old block. At heart we had all been abnormally fearful. It mattered little whether we had sat on the shore of life drinking ourselves into forgetfulness or had plunged in recklessly and willfully beyond our depth and ability. The result was the same—all of us had nearly perished in a sea of alcohol.
But today, in well-matured A.A.’ s, these distorted drives have been restored to something like their true purpose and direction. We no longer strive to dominate or rule those about us in order to gain self-importance. We no longer seek fame and honor in order to be praised. When by devoted service to family, friends, business, or community we attract widespread affection and are sometimes singled out for posts of greater responsibility and trust, we try to be humbly grateful and exert ourselves the more in a spirit of love and service. True leadership, we find, depends upon able example and not upon vain displays of power or glory.
Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can be leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be. Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God’s help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God’s scheme of things—these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.”