Similar Steve

Similar:  Nearly but not exactly the same or alike; having a general resemblance.


My new apartment is a nice neighborhood close to the downtown section of the New City where I've lived for over a year now so you have to wonder when I'm going to start calling it The City, although that sounds a little pompous.  The downtown is also very nice, full of people and an active business community.  In between is a four or five block area that is a little more transitional -- not rough or dangerous but more transient in nature, less established and scrubbed clean.  This morning I walked the five blocks into this area to try a new meeting.  I had heard this meeting was tougher than your average suburban meeting.  Personally, I really didn't care; I wasn't sure how rowdy things could get at 7AM.


I'm generally careful to take the time to sum up my attitudes about a new meeting -- anything new to be honest about it --  before I even walk through the door: "I do not like this meeting.  I do not like these people or the lame format.  The meeting is too big (or too small), the room is too cold (or too hot, although is not a common complaint for me), and the chairs are too soft or . . . well, I better stop there.  As a guy who is padding challenged in the rear area I never complain about soft chairs.


Anyway, I could see that this was not a meeting where I was going to make a lot of close friends.  While I don't feel bad about myself when I go someplace where people have more stuff than me and I don't feel superior when the circumstances are reversed, I am realistic about the world.  I can attend a meeting in Beverly Hills and be warmly welcomed but those people are never going to invite me over for dinner.  Ditto for some rugged inner city neighborhood.


It was a great meeting, by the way.  I really got a lot out of it.  People said great stuff.  I work hard today listening to the similarities and not the differences.  I used to really focus on differences.  It was a coping technique to help me justify all kinds of terrible behavior.  Who of us hasn't said: "Well, I didn't get that bad" or, better yet "Sure, if I had all of your advantages I could get sober, too."  Some of us use our money and privilege to buy our way out of difficult situation, extending our alcoholic misery.  And The Rooms are full of legions of men and women who have been in prison or lived on the streets.  Alcoholism is a great leveler of mankind.


Similarities.  Not differences: similarities.