You Are Obviously WRONG!

Wrong: Implies the inflicting of unmerited injury or harm upon another.

As the year draws to a close I'm alternately amused and annoyed by all of the analysis saturating the airwaves. The aggrieved parties, which seem to be everyone alive, here in the richest nation on earth where very few really bad things ever happen, tell us all how terrible everything is and why what we are doing to correct this sad state of affairs is COMPLETELY WRONG! We are going to hell in a hand-basket and the only solution is to do the EXACT OPPOSITE! of what we are doing now.

I'm reminded of my mind set when I first entered The Program and heard about the 12 Steps, our suggestions to make ruined lives whole again. I was pretty sure everyone had been drinking wood alcohol or whatever the stuff is that makes you go blind and lose your mind completely. I was eager to explain that I was different, that I didn't have a job or a girlfriend or any money and no one liked me anymore and my feet smelled bad. I didn't see how these sweet and inoffensive bromides were going to solve my problems, which were real and intractable and very, very, extremely unique.

One of the great benefits of my recovery is that when I quit trying to drown out everyone else with my screams of disapproval I can learn some good stuff. I'm not always right. There are a lot of good ideas out there, and if I quit trying to explain why your beliefs are so stupid I might learn something new, something that might help me out.

I'm not suggesting that when I listen to someone that I disagree with that I'm going to change my mind. I am, after all, STUBBORN AS HELL! and RARELY WRONG! But sometimes I do change my mind because I learn a better way of doing something. And I learn to see an issue from a different point of view. Just because I disagree with someone else doesn't make them wrong or stupid, which is what I suspected before.

Today I can shut up for a minute and remember the advice I received sitting in bars, talking to other drunks.