Michelangelo

I went to a meeting for a while in a Close Maximum Security prison in OH.  The inmates had been convicted for terrible crimes but weren't judged to be security risks - there weren't any gangs, for instance.  The first time I drove up to the prison I was terrified.  The meeting room was located on the other side of the prison complex so we had to make a long walk past a lot of convicts to get there, which was intimidating as hell.  The guys in the meeting looked tough and because it wasn't a Maximum Security institution there were no guards in the room - this meant I went from terrified to scared shitless.  So to make matters worse I put on my best Bad Ass act.  This was pointless and ridiculous - I was clearly a skinny wimp from the suburbs and I didn't fool anyone.  I still cringe today thinking about it.

My goal today is to be who I am.  I don't mean to suggest that I don't have any work left on the person you would see in front of you if you could see me which you can't - I mean to suggest that I have a personality - a product of my upbringing and my internal wiring - that would be really hard to change.  People who know me understand that the way I behave around them is the way I behave with strangers and with my family and with  myself, mumbling a brilliant monologue as I sit in my easy chair, talking to people I see in my mind but who aren't really there.

If I be myself then I make real friends, form real relationships.  Sometimes the areas of my personality that cause me the most emotional grief are also the areas that allow me to succeed and achieve, so I generally go with what I got.  I think that when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous I was buried under a thick layer of cement and clay and dried bullshit.  The Program didn't go get a new block of marble and start from scratch - it carve away the gunk on top to get at what was underneath.

Michelangelo, I've heard, didn't create a statue out of a piece of marble - he released the figure that was already there.