Outside Issues

At my excellent, excellent men's meeting last night we're currently studying The Traditions and the entree served up was Tradition 10 which warns us about taking sides on outside issues.  It's a good Tradition that was undoubtedly born in a veritable shitstorm of controversy - none of the lessons we've learned have come easily.  We're lucky if we can get through a discussion of what kind of coffee cups to buy without a fistfight breaking out.  No doubt well-meaning members were trying to draw The Fellowship into taking sides on all kinds of worthy causes. 

The intent here is avoid anything that might be an excuse for the newcomer to bolt.  I know personally that I didn't want to be in a meeting and I looked hard and wide and deep for reasons that The Program wasn't for me.  And I found them, apparently, seeing as it took me 18 months to get sober.  If someone had been taking a public position on with which I vehemently disagreed I would have been out of there, and I was barely in there, anyway.

The conversation veered into how hard it is to listen to someone in the real world discussing controversial matters - religion, politics, morality, money - with which I might disagree.  I want to get in there and say my piece, make the offender see the error of his ways.  Now, granted my opinions on these things have been consistent for a long time - there's very little chance that I'm going to change my mind - and I'm in a Program that stresses open mindedness, so the chance that I'm going to cause a sea change in some blowhard holding forth at loud volume about the size of the federal government or the health of the church or appropriate sexual behavior is damn small.

Usually  I keep my mouth shut, an excellent position for my mouth to be in.  But I listen and I judge and then I go home and have long conversations, arguments, shouting matches with some dude who isn't there and who couldn't pick me out of a police line-up.  There's this one guy in particular who holds forth at a high volume at my exercise club, opining stupidly and offensively, in my opinion, on all matter of outside issues.  I don't know him.  He's always been friendly to me, giving me shit about how my little thrift-shop suit jacket is out of place at the pool.  Still, I go home and have extended arguments with him, in my head, debunking his stupid opinions.  The chance that he would change his mind is vanishingly small and the reasons for why I give a shit about his opinions are opaque even to me.

One of my friends last night said, in essence, that the world doesn't need me constantly weighing in on every last little thing going on.  The world doesn't need my opinion.  The world doesn't need me talking.  The world is going to be a better place if I try not to talk.  Think about it - how often has someone said to me: "Hey, Seaweed, what do you think about the Fed's policy on mortgage relief?"  Nobody cares.  They want to tell you about their opinion, not hear about yours.