Letting go” means discipline, and joy comes through pain
FOR SEVERAL years before I began my new life in AA, I taught American literature in a university. One of the writers whose work I enjoyed reading and discussing with students was Emily Dickinson, She captured in a few words the peculiar definitions of experience that I had felt but could not articulate.
One of her poems had a special appeal that brought me back to it over and over. It begins: “I can wade Grief / Whole Pools of it / I’m used to that / But the least push of Joy / Breaks up my feet / And I tip–drunken.”
Those brief lines describe clearly what kept my drinking habits active. I could wade whole pools of grief and depression; over the years, I had psychiatrists to help me through them. I was used to that. But the least push of joy broke up my feet and tipped me, drunken, every time: a vacation, a raise or a promotion, an anniversary, Millard Fillmore’s birthday. Those were occasions to drink. Soon, I was finding a reason to turn every day of the year into a festival. When that happens, none of them is special or very festive.
After being around AA for a while, I went back to the poem one day and found an entirely new way of reading it. I had never realized that all my drinking had begun with the carefree moments of celebration and joy, only to end in those desperate years when I had tried to keep up the pleasure and the fun. The program was giving me an understanding of my dependence upon alcohol, and as a fringe benefit, a new reading of a favorite poem.
But that wasn’t all. Several lines further on, Dickinson comments that we must guard against those unprotected times of cheer when we are open to hurt and anguish. I then began to grasp the full meaning of two crucial lines: “Power is only Pain– / Stranded, through Discipline . . .”
I had often used that definition of power to start classroom discussions of its possible meaning for students. But now I seemed to be reading it for the first time. It expressed what I was beginning to understand about Alcoholics Anonymous.
Power is a key word in this program, and its importance is underlined repeatedly in the Twelve Steps. We admitted in the beginning that “we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.” Then we “came to believe that a Powergreater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” And in the Eleventh Step, we pray “for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
I began to see the emphasis this program places upon force and drive. I realized that anyone who regards AA as only the passive giving up of alcohol has not carefully read the Steps. Our continual dependence upon a Higher Power demonstrates further the importance we place upon action and accomplishment.
The source of power, Dickinson adds, is pain. In my AA experience, I have never met a member who has not experienced some degree of pain. I have never met anyone who decided to come into the program on a beautiful morning in spring when everything was going well. Most of us entered on our knees, and the sharing of this mutual pain is a large part of what brings us back to meetings.
“Strand” means to form by twisting together, as in the strands of a rope. So it is implied that the achievement of power comes by way of mixing pain with discipline. And discipline, the word that all of us dread from our years in school, was the part of AA that frightened me most.
In those early days, I hoped that with harsh discipline and self-will, I might be able to stop drinking. I was prepared to sit through meetings holding on to my chair with the grim determination to see this thing through, no matter what. As a child, I had been taught that if I worked hard enough and disciplined myself, I could accomplish whatever goal I set. Maybe that principle would hold true for my desire to stop drinking.
But the members of AA surprised me with a new definition of the term. Instead of holding on, I was told to let go. Instead of using self-control, I was encouraged to turn my will and my life over to God. And at the end of Chapter Six in the Big Book, I read that “we alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.”
That was a definition I had never heard before. “Letting go” had always meant self-indulgence: polishing off the rest of the bottle, eating the whole cake, sleeping until noon. Now, I heard that letting go meant acquiring discipline. I had to redefine the term in light of what AA members were telling me.
“Power is only Pain– / Stranded, through Discipline . . .”
I have been around the program for a few twenty-four hours now, and I’m beginning to understand the meaning of those lines. The renewal of discipline is a process that I must set in motion every day. But I’m learning to wade each pool of grief, to take each painless step of joy, with the power given me through the discipline of Alcoholics Anonymous.