Verbal Body Blows

Normally the Twelfth Month includes a lot of reminders about how important our service work is to our own sobriety and the First Month emphasizes powerlessness but I seem to be stuck on the service end of things even though we're in the New Year . .  .    

There have been a couple of instances lately where different men have expressed a lot of gratitude for my friendship.  I appreciate this greatly but I do get the sense that they are overestimating how I feel about the relationships.  I like both of them fine but they are not men that I find particularly interesting or that I have a desire to get to know better.  This is not a criticism of who they are but more a statement of who I am.  I really love the baseball/football game analogy.  Some people think football is great but if you don't like football don't go to football games and complain that it's not a baseball game.  It's not a baseball game!  These two guys are football fans and I'm a baseball guy.  We're never going to connect in a way that interests me.

Here's the point: I'm trying to think less about myself and more about others and even though I've been doing this a long, long time I still spend a lot of time thinking about myself and not enough time thinking about others.  When I see these guys I put on my "I give a shit" face and hitch up my britches and listen to the complaining and the tirades.  Neither of them seems to be very committed to any meaningful change and I'm not a guy to give commands or instructions or tasks so I see that this is one of those cases where what they need and want is what I'm giving them.  Not what I want to give them but what they want to receive, and this seems to be helping them.  I don't know how many more times or how many different ways I can make the fairly tiresome point that Being of Service means I'm trying to help someone else in the way they need/want to be helped.

A new guy delivered a delicious verbal body blow to me outside the meeting a few days ago.  I thought it was funny and - as I have pointed out - if a prodigious shit-giver like me can't take it I should go dig a hole and crawl down into it.  During the meeting I went to replenish my coffee and he followed me into the kitchen to make sure that I hadn't taken offense.  This made me happy.  I think he and I have relationships in recovery where we can talk about things like this.  I was glad he felt comfortable clearing the air immediately instead of wondering if he had done something to piss me off.  I assured him that it is almost impossible to offend someone who doesn't really care what anyone thinks about him, and to assure him that he had never done anything but put a smile on my face.