Willingness

I once chaired a meeting that started at 7:30 on Saturday morning.  The format was for a speaker to establish a topic by giving a brief talk on a favorite passage from The Book.  I asked an old friend to speak one Saturday and he showed up early with a relatively new guy that he was sponsoring.  He must have been a good sponsor because the guy's still sober, although I'm sure my friend would protest that he simply ran into someone who was sick of drinking and ready to do whatever was necessary.

Afterward, my buddy shared this anecdote:

"I called up Zippy and told him that he needed to pick me up at 6:30 on Saturday morning," he said.

"OK," Zippy replied.

Long pause.

"What's going on?" he asked.

I love that story.  I can so relate to that willingness.  And I can tell you that the willingness I finally acquired was because initially I REFUSED to do anything that I didn't want to do.  I was going to show those know-it-all SOBs who were trying to push me around - who did they think they were trying to tell the Mighty Seaweed what to do?  They said Left and I turned Right.

Strangely enough, I kept drinking and using and continued my downward spiral into misery.  Eventually I had had enough and I did whatever those guys asked me to do.  I didn't argue or insist on an explanation anymore.  I just said yes.  They could have asked me to do just about anything and I would have done it.  I couldn't take the pain anymore.

I met with Ferrari Guy this morning.   I asked him to read the First Step and then write a First Step list, and he did that.  He finished that a few days early, in fact, so I told him to read the First Step every day until we got together to talk.

"I read that Step 10 times," he said.  "I kept finding new stuff to think about."

I don't know how this will shake out but he is sure as hell keeping me sober.