Want: A desire to possess something. Need: Require something because it's essential or very important.
Because I'm such a congenitally ungrateful person I have a canned gratitude list that I repeat each and every morning. I try to pay attention to what I'm saying so that I really am grateful for everything that I have. I confess to asking for a few things in a totally selfish "I hope I get everything I want" kind of way while hedging my bets by adding that crucial qualifier "your will be done." I don't believe my Higher Power is too annoyed when I ask for something that will make my life more comfortable and less painful. I feel like a 5 year old asking his dad for a bunch of expensive, dangerous, unrealistic gifts for Christmas. Dad doesn't mind but he's not going to get everything on that list. I also remind myself that I always get what I need and not what I want. I'm taken care of that way but it can be pretty irritating.
The two areas that are amusing me the most at the moment are the gratitude I feel (should feel, sometimes) for my extended family and for the friends I have in my life (have had in my life). I think most of us come into The Program with the feeling that we've been raised by psycho asshole sociopaths when the fact of the matter is that most of us have had a reasonable upbringing, more or less. There are some difficult stories of really awful circumstances, no doubt, but most of us are just trying to blame someone/something else for our lousy behavior. Today I just say"thanks for everything you did" while trying to imagine the faces - the smiling faces - of all the people that raised me. I turned out okay so they didn't do the shitty job that I once imagined.
Same with my friends. When I strike up friendships - whether they have lasted for years or are relatively new or are deep, abiding relationships or more of the kind that were it not for A.A. there wouldn't be much of a connection I try to hang onto and maintain these connections. The great Keep It Complicated schism really exacerbated my efforts to control everything. There are people I don't see any more. There are also people who have drifted from The Program or who have moved away or have chosen to attend a totally different set of meetings. I'm sort of unusual in that I use the phone and email to stay in touch with folks from all over the place and I'm much more aggressive about this than they are. So what happens from time to time? I get my feelings hurt. I find myself ticked off at people I love and care about because I'm reaching out and they're not, forgetting that maybe, just maybe, I'm not as fascinating to them as I imagine. Today I say "thanks for all the people who have come in and out of my life over the years." This helps me to be appreciative of all of these amazing connections I've had. Some are very active, some reignite quickly when we connect even after a long period of time, some stay strong even over long distances, some reveal themselves as fairly shallow when time or circumstances remove the individual from my life.
I say this: All Good.
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