Plagiarism

 "It's the old law of the more you give the more you get.  You never know when you may help somebody.  The satisfaction you get out of helping a fellow human being is one of the finest experiences you can have."

"Do not fall into the error of calling for help and not doing the things that should be done.  You need a life of prayer and meditation, but you must still do your work in the busy ways of life.  The busy person is wise to rest and wait patiently for God's guidance."

"I must prepare for the future by doing the right thing at the right time now.  If a thing should be done, I should deal with that thing today and get it righted with God before I allow myself to undertake any new duty."

"It's the thing that are hidden that weigh on the mind.  They feel a sense of release and freedom when they have opened up their hearts to us.  I must never say that I have only enough strength for my own need.  The more I give away, the more I will keep."

Reaching Out

Today I'm pretty OK with the Keep It Complicated schism . . . although with all the bitching and attention I devote to it you might think otherwise.  I'm attending the original meeting in the original church basement after the facility reopened and the church invited us to start back up with some conditions based on the pandemic, the conditions which infuriated the break-away people in the first place.  The joke about the bitching, grouchy break-away members is that they're generally not my group - not that they're bad people or that I'm unfriendly with them or can't learn anything from them but that I'd hope, as the ocean liner was sinking, that they would swim over to the other rowboat. If I got to pick the people in my rowboat I wouldn't pick them first.  I wouldn't use my oar to try to fight them off if they swam over to my rowboat but I'd be happier waving at them over turbulent, shark-infested waters.   Frankly, if someone had told me six months ago that we could reduce the attendance of the original meeting by asking these bitchers to leave I would have opened my wallet and started throwing $20s at him.  A more perfect list I could not imagine.

The minor conundrum for me is that my sponsor is going to that meeting.  So I don't really have any interest in talking to him right now because in a general A.A. phone call the conversation inevitably touches on "how's your Program?" at some point, and I do not want to hear jack-shit about the bitching meeting.  So do I keep calling him and try to avoid the topic?  Do I fire him?  Do I just quit calling him and hope this situation resolves on its own as society recalibrates?  As you can imagine I'd prefer explaining to him, in minute, exhausting detail why he's fucking up right now because everyone loves unsolicited advice from me.

I hate falling back on my long-term sobriety as an excuse for anything because I think that's a slippery slope.  Nevertheless, having a sponsor after 35 years of active, engaged attendance in Alcoholics Anonymous does give me some wiggle room.  I talk to members with long-term sobriety almost every day; I write almost every day; I read A.A. literature every day; and I attend a ton of meetings . . . so I'm not walking a fine line between drunkenness and sobriety, but I do like the concept of a sponsor: someone that I'm accountable to, that I see regularly, that knows a lot about me as a result of regular contact.

The idea of calling my sponsor to tell him I'm pissed at my sponsor is quite funny when you think about it.

I did call an old friend from Cincinnati to bounce this stuff off of him.  Like me he's an old salesman.  I could envision him organizing his thoughts as I was talking; asking measured questions in a slow, considered manner; probing for what was really going on.  I like talking to salespeople, particularly those who worked in a technical field.  We're used to managing groups of people in chaotic, uncontrolled situations - we had to take control while not seeming too bossy.

"Seaweed, guys like us . . . with a lot of time . . . we basically know what we have to do."  If I was new the advice in this situation would be to suck it up or to get a new sponsor.  If I was new I would need that sponsor presence a lot more than I do now.  It's not like I'm not talking to a lot of people who have a lot of sobriety, most of them with more sobriety than my current sponsor.  Still, I need to deal with this situation for my own peace of mind.  I woke up this morning and things were clearer.  One of the most amazing facts of the human brain is that when you're asleep it remains highly engaged and it can work through things all on its own and present its owner with good solutions the next morning.  I don't have to be actively thinking about something to find an answer.  This is a feature of the mind.  This is also why we "intuitively understand something which used to baffle us."

I believe that for a while I'm not going to make any outgoing phone calls.  If I do speak with him I'm going to plead heavy engagement in helping the meeting get back on its feet (which is true but not an excuse for not calling him) and fall back on the aphorism "Out of sight - out of mind" (which is not true but I think some mild evasion in the service of kindness is a good idea).

And that's that . . .  at least for a couple of hours.

Change That Resentment

 Change: To become something different; to make something into something else.

I know I've looked this word up many times, fraught with great importance as it is.  I just love the idea: something then something else.  One thing then another thing completely different.   The topic in the meeting this morning was change.  The leader has a shit-ton of sobriety and she's struggling with this great transition from an on-line CoVid pandemic society to one that's opening up.  It's weird, frankly.  I didn't mind going virtual in my recovery life until I started to get tired of looking at people on a screen and now I'm getting up to trundle off to an early morning meeting thinking: "Fuck this getting up early stuff."  That's me - whatever it is I find something objectionable about it.  If I change something I bitch about it and then if it changes back exactly the way it was I bitch about that even though it's what it was in the first place.

Whew.  I'm confusing myself.

I'm really fascinated with this idea of a resentment right now.  If I see someone kicking a dog is my dislike for this person a resentment?  It sure doesn't seem that way to me at the moment.  What if I'm sitting in my car and somebody I know knocks out my windshield, hires a good lawyer, and skates free on a technicality?  How do I deal with this person?  Am I supposed to like him?  Is the absence of a resentment simply that I don't let this guy live rent free in my head?  Do I forgive him and then what?  Back to normal, more standoff-ish, or active animosity?   I've never been too invested in the idea of acceptance, either.  Am I supposed to stand by while someone kicks that dog thinking: "Everything is exactly as it should be in God's world."  That doesn't seem right.

This is life, isn't it?  What a weird, wild ride it is sometimes.

Don't Dabble In The Past

 I'm always writing down notes in my . . . well . . . notebook.  A few days ago I jotted this perplexing phrase: "Don't dabble in the past."  Yeah, no clue what memory that was supposed to trigger.

My relationships are a continual source of amazement to me.  I spend a lot of time riffing on how many people I hate and why I hate them and why I don't understand the fact that they won't get away from me . . .  I am joking, of course.  I am blessed with such a raft of friends that there's really no more room on the raft.  If you're currently not my friend and you'd like to be then you'll have to knock someone off the raft.

There's this guy I know from A.A.  He's way, way on the other side of the divide vis-a-vis politics and social issues.  We've developed a relationship over the years in large part, I think, because I have a ton more sobriety than he does so he uses me as a sounding board from time to time.  We've managed to set any contentious issues to the side and focus on common themes, although occasionally I get a glimpse of his Facebook feed which alarms and dismays me. He delivers newspapers in my neighborhood very early in the morning so if I'm up I'll pop outside, flag him down, and we'll chat for a minute.  Remember I don't really like him all that much.  We'll never be Go To Coffee friends. 

I recently took a subscription to the Sunday New York Times.  It's all I can do to get through that huge thing in a week so I decided to curtail my subscription to Sunday only.  The next Friday I got a paper with this note attached: "Happy Friday."  Now the paper splats on my driveway whenever he has an extra copy . . .  which is every day.  I presently have a pile of newspapers.  I can't read all these newspapers but I'll be goddamned if I'm going to tell him to stop.  I mean it's a free newspaper!

I've gotten bogged down in an extended free newspaper riff when the real point is: This is Alcoholics Anonymous.  This is the result of a life dedicated to growing spiritually and being of service.  This kind of stuff happens all the time.  I'm not surprised any more when it happens.  If the paper stops coming I'll be fine.  If I continue to get it I'll be fine.  When I listened to this guy drone on and on about problems of his own making, problems which interest me not a whit, a concerned and solicitous and mostly fake expression plastered on my face, I wasn't hoping for a free newspaper.  I was trying to be of service.  I was trying to be helpful.  I was trying not to think of my self every goddamn minute of the day.  Sometimes when I'm listening to people unburden themselves I'm barely listening.  I'm thinking: "I am so grateful to not be thinking about myself."

Remember this: Don't Dabble in the Past!

It's So Fine

Fine:  Being acceptable, adequate, passable, or satisfactory. 

Here's why I talk to friends one-on-one . . . 

One of my Go To dudes is a kind of mediator between disparate public agencies so he's practiced in the art of herding cats.  I'm less skilled in this arena.  I think most cats are idiots so they should all listen to me and do what I want and, thank God, the cats don't generally do this.  We were shooting the shit today about the severe polarization of our society and how this is affecting life as society begins to open back up and particularly how this affects A.A. as we transition back into a more familiar world.

One of my favorite words is fine.  It sums up so many areas of my life.  It's also remarkably hard to put into action.  When some part of my life seems out of control, unmanageable, objectionable in some way I often say: "It's going to be fine."  And it usually is.

We were talking about how different Alcoholics Anonymous groups are handing the transition from Zoom to In Person as churches and municipal buildings begin allowing us to meet again.  My trials and tribulations with the Keep It Complicated group are well documented.  The business meeting for his home group is so structured that everyone present is given the chance to speak - they go around the screen, in other words, instead of the free-for-all that occurs when my home group meets.

When it got to my buddy he said: "If we stay on Zoom, it'll be fine.  If we meet in person, it'll be fine.  If we set up a hybrid meeting of some kind, it'll be fine.  And it's probably going to be fine in a way that we don't anticipate."  It was that last phrase that really rocked my world.  It's a reminder that I can plan and plan and control and control but life usually weaves and jukes according to its own rhythms.

My home group was meeting in person for the first time today.  I decided not to attend because I anticipated the first meeting would be a little chaotic; then I decided to attend to show my support; finally I got up this morning and didn't go.

It was fine.  I'm having a fine day.

Count 'em - Four

 I think if I ever start my own multi-national company (Fair Disclosure: I don't know what this company would do or how to start a company or any desire at all to start a company) that the official motto would be: "Making Big Things Out of Small Things."  We'd run a series of commercials that featured wry actors asking:"Do you have a mouse?  Would you like to make it into an elephant?  Give us a call!  We can do that!"  In select markets we'd show a married couple puttering about the house, getting along, until one of the partners would take offense at a seemingly harmless remark and respond a little more forcefully than the circumstances would seem to warrant.  We'd show the argument getting more heated and venomous until it blows up into a fully-fledged crisis.

On a side note I looked up the phrases "Buck Naked" and "Butt Naked" last night.  Buck Naked came first, believe it or not, and the origins are murky.  There was a lot of chatter about it having some Native American connection, the idea being that male deer normally run around without any clothes on.  Seems sketchy to me.

"The first requisites of an abundant life are the spiritual things: honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love.  Until you have these qualities, quantities of material things are of little real use to you."

The Four Absolutes: Honesty (Is it true or is it false?); purity (Is it right or is it wrong?); unselfishness (How will this affect the other person?); and love (Is it ugly or is it beautiful?)  These were benchmarks of behavior in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous.  I particularly like the qualification for love: Beauty versus Ugliness.  That's simple and it's clean.

Here's another funny contradiction in the spiritual life that we pursue: that the longer we're sober, the longer we're on a spiritual path, the more stuff we seem to accumulate and the less important it is to us.  This is manifestly unfair.  The exact opposite is true, of course, in the realm of our personal relationships: they get better and better, more abundant, and we value them more.  But the stuff, the money, the houses?  We don't seem to attach as much importance to them as when we were drinking.

Resentments

 "Try never to judge.  The human mind is so delicate and so complex that only its Maker can know it wholly.  Each mind is so different, actuated by such different motives, controlled by such different circumstance, influenced by such different sufferings.  You cannot know all the influences that have gone to make up a personality."

Resentment:  Anger or displeasure stemming from belief that one has been wronged or betrayed by others; indignation.

"Never forget that resentment is a deadly hazard to an alcoholic."  Bam.

"But with the alcoholic . . . this business of resentment is infinitely grave."  Boom.

"Resentment is the 'number one' offender."  Badda Bing.

"The elder statesman is the one who sees the wisdom of the group's decision, who holds no resentment over his reduced status, whose judgment, fortified by considerable experience, is sound, and who is willing to sit quietly on the sidelines patiently awaiting developments."  Judas, Mary, and Joseph, please leave me alone.

I'm pondering my resentment over the break-away Keep It Complicated group.  I've been trying to convince myself it's not a real resentment, that it's not a serious, deadly resentment.  I'm looking up words, reading from the literature, talking to other alcoholics whose wisdom and experience I respect, and I gotta tell ya I'm getting slaughtered: I got a resentment.  I can soften it by calling it mild or justified but then again I used to justify drinking 18 beers and then driving a ton of steel and glass at 70 MPH.

I don't think I'm resentful about the group itself - SuperK pointed out I don't even know who's attending the meeting.  I'm pretty sure I'm resentful at the ringleaders who started the meeting.  I see them as grouchy, grumpy, bitchy old men who don't like to be told what to do and if you explain why they're being told to do something they don't want to do they brush the explanations off with facile reasoning.  And I perceive - maybe correctly, maybe not - that this kind of behavior has taken an awful public health emergency and worsened it and extended it, and this has affected ME.

It gets worse.  My sponsor also attends this meeting.  I don't put him in the same category as the ringleaders but he's still attending the meeting.  And when the ringleaders do something I find particularly irritating he sort of laughs it off.  This irritates the shit out of me.  It sounds like one of those laughs that came out of me when I would say something like "those 18 beers?  boy, I don't remember the drive home last night" or "I gave that woman gonorrhea but she thought she caught it from her boyfriend."  It's humorous if you're soulless.  

I'm having trouble talking with my sponsor at the moment because "how's your Program going?" is a standard part of my stump speech with any alcoholic.  It's a way to keep my friends accountable and a way for me to remind myself that I better be taking care of my Program.  The good thing for me is that I have a ton of close friends who have a ton of sobriety so my sponsee-sponsor relationship at this point is a lot less fraught with importance . . .

Still . . . infinitely grave . . .