Actions V Words

One of my good friends in Alcoholics Anonymous is a woman who has a job training young people how to be hair stylists.  She took this job not too long ago with a great deal of gratitude and enthusiasm.  Almost immediately her daughter - who lives in Norway - got quite ill so my friend took a leave of absence in order to spend three months with her daughter and her newborn grandson.  She asked for and her company graciously permitted her to leave even though this cost them the tuition money paid by the class she was slated to teach.  Now that she's back she has offered to fill in for any of her co-workers who teach on Saturday -  normally her day off - when they have a conflict.  She doesn't want to do this, to be honest about it.  She works all week and values her time off.  But she does it.

I am of the opinion that most people who enter The Rooms have the emotional I.Q. of a five year old, and I'm probably being generous here.  One characteristic of five year olds is that they don't often listen to what you say but they pay close, silent attention to what you do.  Talk is cheap.  Anybody can talk.  Talk, talk, talk.  Actions speak louder than words.  All of us know members who  sound great in meetings but exhibit some gaping holes in their spiritual lives.  I'm not judging here - sobriety is hard, a spiritual life is hard, living is hard - but if you're struggling with relationships maybe you shouldn't talk to the guy who has been married five times, no matter how good he sounds when he's talking about relationships.  There's a new guy in our meeting who I think is going to make it.  He doesn't talk much but listens with a fearsome intensity.  He occasionally compliments me on my presence and behavior but never on what I've said.

Reminds me of my early sobriety in Chicago when I almost always had a coffee commitment.  These were three month commitments and they were for large meetings that had both regular and decaf - huge tureens of coffee that took a long time to brew - and people got to the meeting a half hour early to shoot the shit, which meant I had to get there an hour early.  I was an important guy - working as a glorified typist - so I was often resentful about the fact that I was losing a lot of free time which I could have been doing some important shit.  I was never thanked for making coffee.  In fact, it wasn't unusual for someone to bitch about the quality of the coffee.  And these were usually the people who hung around and talked after the meeting which meant I had to hang around until everyone left and I could empty and scour the pots. 

My mouth was sarcastic, my thoughts were venomous, but my actions were good.