Angry Chris

A guy shared at the meeting yesterday who picked up the nickname Angry Chris early in his sobriety.  A dude also shared who calls himself Poor Petey - he gave himself this name.  It's bad enough when your friends stick you with a nickname that is not meant to be complimentary but when you do it to yourself that's another matter altogether.  Sometimes I joke that my nickname should be Half-Measures Seaweed, as in "half-measures availed us nothing."  I do have a tendency to try to get by with as little effort as possible.  As Homer Simpson said in his campaign to become the Garbage Commissioner of Springfield: "Can't someone else do it?"  Unfortunately, it's usually the case that these nicknames have a lot of truth in them that we can learn from.

I get it in a general sense.  Sometimes I do things to keep my shortcomings in the forefront so they're always getting proper attention.  I don't want to obsess over my defects but I'm a guy who lived for many, many years ignoring them, repressing them, minimizing them, suppressing them, and I can't improve if I'm not paying attention to their forceful presence in my life.

That being said I also have to be careful that I'm not taking the message too much to heart.  If you tell a child repeatedly that's she stupid eventually she'll begin to believe that she's stupid, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

I was at a men's spiritual retreat many years ago, talking with an old, dear friend, one of those guys who doesn't have to tip-toe around with me because he knows that our friendship is so solid that it can handle the occasional upset.  If I piss you off, either by mistake or with malice of forethought, because I'm saying something you need to hear, and that damages the relationship it wasn't much of a relationship to begin with.  I was talking about the fact that I'm not naturally a very grateful person when he interrupted me.  I'm a lot more grateful than I give myself credit for and I'm getting more and more grateful the longer I stay sober and, frankly, I think the human condition tends toward fear and ingratitude because it's a tough, scary world out there, but apparently I was taking it too far.  "I hear you saying that, Seaweed," he said.  "But I see in your actions that it isn't true.  You behave as if you're grateful."

I've remembered this bluntness for many years.  Be hard on yourself but give yourself a break.