I'm asked from time to time why I continue to attend A.A. meetings when I'm no longer an active drunk? I'm tempted to say: "Because I'm still an active asshole." While that quip is meant mostly as a joke there's more than a touch of truth clinging to it. To wit: the clerk at my grocery store who annoyed me over a trifle or the woman who brought her own personal boom box into my public pool, provoking me to behave in an incredibly childish and immature way by trying to splash water onto her audio equipment. (Ed. Note: After I did this incredibly childish and immature thing I told on myself at a meeting. Then . . . I've never seen her again. Life is funny that way. Not "ha-ha" funny but "D'oh!" funny.) I'm grateful that I don't often pursue my minor grievances into such extremes of behavior but am aware that I'm aggrieved over minor things more stridently than I'd care to be.
This has reminded me of a story a man told about a contentious relationship he had with a neighbor. It was suggested that he might get some relief if he prayed for this guy every day for two weeks. It worked - he felt some relief and was able to put the resentment behind him only to come home and see a For Sale sign in his neighbor's yard. Do'h! God is not a little funny - God is damned funny.
And I did share with my home group - out loud, when other people were in the room, in the language commonly spoken in the region - the story of the grocery store clerk who annoyed the holy shit out of me by doing something incredibly inconsequential. Most of the time if I just chill and breathe and shake my internal head the pique flows away. But I find that my community keeps me on the straight and narrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment