Takers of the World, Unite!

Take:  To get into one's hand, possession or control, with or without force.  (Ed. Note:  I like that they slipped the word "force" into the definition - it adds a sinister element of violence that I think is appropriate).

When I came into The Fellowship I was a taker.  Ah, who am I kidding - I'm still a taker, just not a gluttonous one with an insatiable, voracious appetite.  I don't think at its essence this makes me particularly unusual.  After all people are programmed instinctively to procure sex, self-worth, and stuff.  It IS true that as an alcoholic I had a pretty strong drive to overload the sex-power-money apple cart, which sometimes tipped over.  The Book suggests, gently but repeatedly, that we drunks have a tendency to overdo virtually everything.

Then I'm faced with this Program that offers me all of the help I could ever use as long as I ask for it, a nice mix of assistance and personal responsibility.  It does not promise to be able to read my mind and figure out magically what I need.  Because I always assumed that givers were suckers I had no experience asking for help.  I would never freely give help unless I was under extreme duress so I was unable to conceptualize how anyone else might do this weird thing.

I heard a woman describe her behavior around her birthday at a meeting once.  She labored under a strangely egotistical humility - she was uncomfortable being the center of attention so she wouldn't tell anyone it was her birthday and then when they didn't buy her presents and cake and make a big fuss she got pissed off.  Doesn't this sound familiar?  I wanted everyone to be a mind-reader.  I thought you should know what I needed without me saying anything, sort of a "if you loved me I wouldn't have to tell you what I want" scenario.

At my meeting the reading included the %$#!! Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.  To quote: "Grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted - to understand, than to be understood  to love, than to be loved.  For it is by self-forgetting that one find.  It is by forgiving that one is forgiven."

And so on and so forth.