Homer, Again

The Twelve and Twelve, Step Seven . . . 

"Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering.  Escape via the bottle was always our solution.  Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.  But we may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue.  A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, as opposed to something we must have."

Humility:  A modest or low view of one's own importance;  the feeling or attitude that you have no special importance that makes you better than others; it is based on a fundamentally caring and compassionate toward others.

Whew, whew, and whew.  This was not how anyone would have described me post-recovery.  I was always trying to climb to the top of the heap, often on the backs of others.  Your worth to me was based on your utility to me.  If you provided nothing to me you were nothing to me.  If I perceived that I was better than you, I disregarded you as an irrelevance.  If I perceived that you were better than me, I resented you, venomously, and did what I could to climb higher on the pile than you . . . or at least knock your ass off the pile completely.

I mention frequently that much of my life philosophy, my character, my moral fiber, my sense of right and wrong, was born in the mind of Homer Simpson, and whatever pieces didn't originate there come from George Costanza.  One beloved Simpson's episode centers around Homer running for garbage commissioner.  The reason he wanted the job was to change the system so he didn't have to take the garbage out every week.  His defense was that he had just taken the garbage out the previous week so . . . again with the garbage?  He thought this chore was excessive, and I'm inclined to agree with him.  Every time I brush my teeth, for instance, I think: "This is bullshit.  This is unfair."  So Homer promised that his employees would do everything and I mean everything: wash diapers, air out your stinkables, clean your house, the list went on and on.  He was, as you might imagine, immensely popular with his customers.  He was, as you might imagine as well, able to run through the entire years' budget for the sanitation department in a couple of weeks, earning the ire of his superiors and the extremely angry union of large men who worked for the department.