An Evil and Corroding Thread.

Corroding: To eat into or wear away gradually, as if by gnawing; rust; consume; destroy; said of the action of chemicals.

The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear -- primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.

Fear somehow touched about every aspect of our lives. It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it.



When our failings generate fear, we then have soul-sickness. This sickness, in turn, generates still more character defects.

Our fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build.

That's all me. I came up with all of that stuff on my own. I didn't lift it verbatim, word for word, from any literature.

They say that Eskimos have many names for snow and Bedouins have dozens for sand storm. Alcoholics are like that with fear. We're afraid of everything all the while pretending that we're not afraid of anything. We deny its existence; we say that we're mad and depressed and anxious. Those words sound braver and more complicated, more worthy of our complex personalities and tragic nature.

I started to get afraid about something yesterday that I was powerless to resolve immediately. I like to fix problems right away. I don't like to wait for answers. So a guy from the program wanders in while I'm having my post-swim coffee and we shoot the shit. Then I get a call first thing this morning from a different guy and talk some more. A lot of the time if I just get into bed and go to sleep problems start to resolve of their own accord or solutions present themselves.


This requires patience, whatever that is.