"A smile, a word of encouragement, a word of love, goes winged on its way, simple though it may seem, while the might words of an orator fall on deaf ears. Use up the odd moments of your day in trying to do some little thing to cheer up another person. Boredom comes from thinking too much about yourself."
Thanksgiving Day. Good attendance at the meeting this morning - regulars, regulars who work and can't normally attend, several people from out of town, a handful of newcomers including a dude who has had a drink already today. The topic was . . . wait for it . . . Gratitude. The leader talked about The End when he was "out of answers." I like that phrase. He also said that he was "broken." I like that word, too, preferring it to sick. I'm not a sick alcoholic - I'm a broken one.
I usually try to go to meetings on holidays because there are usually folks there who are traveling and folks who don't have any place to go. Holidays can be a major source of depression and loneliness. One Christmas Eve SuperK and I went to our regular Friday night meeting which usually had an attendance of 30 or so. It ended up being the two of us and a couple of people from out of town who were suffering through family dysfunction. My sponsor and I volunteered to run a Big Book meeting in a Cincinnati jail every Thursday night. On Thanksgiving one year one dude showed up - the inmates had free time on that holiday which they chose to spend relaxing and watching TV. "I guess everyone else is cured today," the lone attendee quipped. We had a good meeting. I wondered how the absentees were going to fare when they were released. They literally wouldn't walk across the room to go to a meeting so what were the chances that they were going to drive somewhere after they were free, battling all the temptations of family and girlfriends and easy access to drugs and booze?
Not good, I surmised.
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