Homer and Seinfeld

Baffle:  To frustrate or balk by puzzling or bewildering; confound.


An important thing to remember about The Promises is that they fall into the solution category when we're discussing recovery.  God knows I love the problem category more.  If I could dwell in the problem for the rest of my life I would be in my element.  If I could earn a living creating problems or making problems worse I would be a very, very wealthy man.  The Program, however, keeps forcing me into the solution business.  As a general rule, this is not where I want to go, preferring an endless review of my problems and how bad they are and why they're getting worse and speculating on why they're never going to end.


The formative part of my early sobriety was spent in a city where the bulk of the meetings were based directly on The 12 Steps & 12 Traditions.  A service position lasted 12 weeks; each week was dedicated to a particular Step, taken one by one and in sequence.  We did not skip any Steps but we did not dwell on any of them, either.  Deliberately, carefully, we marched through The Steps one by one.  When we were done with a circuit, we started over.  There were very few discussion meetings which can so easily begin to concentrate on the problem.


This was very annoying for me.  I had many problems that were mesmerizing me.  I couldn't see past these problems.  I never considered that there could be solutions to them and I didn't want to do any work to solve them.  I wanted to wallow in them.  Wallow, wallow, wallow.


Wallow:  To roll about or flounder as in mud, dust, water, slime, etc.; as, pigs wallow in filth.


The Step technique forced me to figure out how to apply the solution to whatever problem I was currently bitching about.  Sometimes I couldn't figure out how to relate the current problem to whatever Step we were on so I was forced to work on the solution only.  Sometimes I could really stretch my story problem to fit into the solution, sort of, like when you take a big sledgehammer and you pound the holy #!&!! out of that little square peg until it fits in the #!&!! round hole.  And sometimes, sometimes, rarely, I glimpsed how the solution might somehow solve the problem.  


What I saw in The Program was a group of Problem People who were more often than not making the right decision when confronted with a decision that needed to be made, even when the decision seemed counter-intuitive.  When I concentrate on the problem it grows bigger.  When I concentrate on the solution, the problem loses its strength.


I bring up again the famous Seinfeld episode where the loser character George starts to do the exact opposite of whatever his instinct is telling him to do, and is amazed when his life begins to really click.  He turns down sex, abuses job interviewers, etc, and the results are fantastic.  That was me when I was getting sober.  If I felt like I should do something I didn't do it.  If I felt like I shouldn't do something, I got busy and did it.  My intuition was almost invariably completely wrong at that point.


I also like the famous Simpson's episode where Homer is in a canoe floating down a river, pondering which side of a fork he should choose.  On the right the sun is shining, there's a rainbow and birds are chirping away in flower filled fields; on the left it's raining, the rapids are roaring, skeletons hang from skeletal trees.


"Hmm," Homer says brightly.  "I wonder which way I should go?"


Today I get up and enter the door filled hallway.  Some of the doors are wide open and some are tightly shut.  Some of the closed doors are made of thick iron and are fastened with many heavy locks and chains.  Goddam, but I want to go through those locked doors.  I figure there must be something really, really cool behind them.