Principles Before Personalities

Principle:   A fundamental assumption or guiding belief.

"What does 'principles before personalities' really mean?  It means we practice honesty, humility, compassion, tolerance, and patience with everyone, whether we like them or not.  Putting principles before personalities teaches us to treat everyone equally."

The funny thing about meetings is that they shall not run eternal.  I've been grousing about a regular meeting of mine for an uncomfortably long time.  The meeting is just fine, mind you, it's that I've allow it to get under my skin.  From time to time I find that my impression of a group becomes dominated by personalities rather than by principles.  I start to concentrate on the individual who's speaking instead of what the individual is saying.  The message is colored by my pre-conceived notion of what the person is going to say.  I'm willing to bet that if you provided me with the written text of a share that annoyed the shit out of me when it was being shared by someone who is annoying the shit out of me I'd be fine with the content.  Sometimes I find myself closing my eyes and concentrating on the words so that my focus isn't affected by an annoying person.  Irritating the shit out of me.

This general flaw runs in most of us and I say this to apply a thick salve of self-justification on the oozing sore that is my intolerance.  

Over the years my meeting schedule changes periodically, but only after I've let my intolerant resentments free to rape and pillage and burn.  I change - my schedule changes, my Program has different needs and requirements, I'm a different person, at least marginally - and the meeting changes - new people come, old people go, formats are tweaked.  So it's time to try something different.

It's so hard to try something different.