Thanks to a good sponsor he stayed and kept an open mind. It was now his turn to give back
I’m having a good time being sober. It wasn’t always like that. In early sobriety, I read a passage in the story Doctor Paul wrote in the back of our Big Book, but I didn’t understand it until I went through an emotional wringer first.
He wrote: “Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes.”
That’s the answer—acceptance. About three years later, I attended a Steps and Traditions AA meeting at a halfway house in Los Angeles. I felt weird about that first meeting there but didn’t know why. The secretary was a nice-looking woman. She set the meeting up mostly by herself. I offered her my help. In the meeting we read from our “Twelve and Twelve” book and shared our experiences, strength and hope. It seemed like the meeting ran off-topic more than it followed the material.
Most of the other 11 AA members there were recently out of jail. Some had already been to AA and slipped. The other AA meetings I attended there were a cross section of different drunks and druggies. There was a mixture of newcomers and oldtimers too. I had three years in AA, in the middle of the herd. I told my sponsor that I felt weird there. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want to return. Besides, there were lots of other AA meetings in town and many were closer to home. This one was out of the way.
My sponsor suggested (his polite way of telling me to do something) that I go back to at least one more meeting to determine what was weird about it. I did go the following week and I showed up a half hour early as usual, only to find that a “house rule” for the meeting was that no one could go inside until 10 minutes before the meeting was due to start. Sitting in the parlor waiting, I saw a sign on the wall that read, “You are not in the world to change things. You are in the world to be changed.”
I looked around and found out the only oldtimer there was our secretary. She had been sober seven years. Most of the other 11 people had fewer than three months. What kind of experience, strength and hope would I get from these newcomers? That’s what I was thinking. But then I had a more important thought: With my three years … what was I doing to help them?
That’s when it hit me. Maybe my Higher Power wants me to be present. Perhaps I’m supposed to sit down and listen. Be there for others. So that’s what I did. This may have been my first conscious image of myself as a kind of “elder statesman.”
Since that day, I have been learning more about the art of listening. I’m trying to earn my black belt in hearing what others are trying to say. I’m trying to leave the middleman—who lives between my ears—out of the picture.
Maybe that’s how it works for me. Who knows? Perhaps that’s how the world changes me. You think?