selfishness

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the nuance of resentment (bleh)

October 15, 2009 in fourth step | 1 comment

I’m beginning work on my fourth step again, and I’m sort of amazed at how much I’ve changed in the past year with regard to resentments. When I started looking at my current resentments (my sponsor has encouraged me to start fresh, and not look at my old fourth step yet), I began thinking do I even have any resentments left?

The ball of anger I had where a soul should have been a year ago is gone. Resentment and fear were my motivating factors then. And that is no longer true.

So, I looked up the definition of resentment, and by the basic definition, the feeling of displeasure or indignation at some act, remark, person, etc., regarded as causing injury or insult, I am in the clear. I know today I am not the center of the universe. I am rarely the motivating factor for other people’s actions.

But when I look at the deeper definition, including “the need for emotion regulation, such as faking happiness while with a person to cover true feelings toward them or speaking in a sarcastic or demeaning way to or about the person,” I am fucked.

There are people in the program, in my workplace, etc, that I would just rather do without, people who proactively create discord and divisions, agitate, aggravate, and just generally stir shit. I thought the fact that I no longer obsess about these people, let them rule my life, and actively plan and plot against them, meant that my resentments had been lifted.

Apparently not. Argh.

I prayed and meditated enough that I could focus on my life. I didn’t realize I actually had to be happy when looking in the face of people that I would just as soon never see again in my life. Does not having resentments mean actually liking everybody? I am at a place where I can find some good in everyone, but there are some people I would just like to take their deeply hidden goodness and quietly move to another planet. But that’s a lot better than what I wished for them before I started this process of recovery.

Progress, right?

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“Exclusively what and restricted to whom?” Auntie Mame

June 8, 2009 in 12 steps, meetings, up(on) awakening | No comments

I went to an amazing speaker meeting at an Alcoholics Anonymous clubhouse Saturday night.  A woman with almost three decades of sobriety shared her story, with unmatched emotional honesty, about her life as a drunk and a user of heroin and crack, the many ways she had harmed herself and others, and how she had used the program of Alcoholics Anonymous to begin recovery and become the remarkably inspirational person she is (to me) today.

 

After the meeting, I went with a friend to a 24-hour coffee place, where we ran into someone from the program (I’ll call her Betty) who, after hearing that I had enjoyed the meeting and thought the speaker was great, announced to me and my friend (and anyone else in the restaurant who might care to listen) that she disagreed with me wholeheartedly, and that when the speaker had begun to share about drug use, that she had left the meeting.  Betty said that with her 20-plus years of sobriety, she knows what keeps people sober, and it is not breaking with the singleness of purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous.  &etc.

 

(That she speaker had more time in the program than Betty did, or that Betty was breaking the anonymity of both me and my friend very publicly, in a small town, with her “Alcoholics Anonymous” tirade didn’t seem to bother her.)

 

Whenever I hear anyone about to share their thoughts on the singleness of purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous, I always groan in my head (at least I hope it’s entirely nonverbal).  If AA truly has a singleness of purpose, it should be able to state it clearly in a single, simple sentence.  Twelve Steps would not be necessary, much less a Big Book, or series of books.

 

Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety directly implies a dualistic group purpose, at minimum. 

 

Our primary purpose is to stay sober would be a single-purpose statement.

 

Our primary purpose is to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety would be a single-purpose statement.

 

The and changes everything.  If the authors of writers of the steps (who I think most can agree were not careless in their writing of the steps) had intended to create a single purpose including both these activities, the sentence could have (and in my humble view, would have) read Our primary purpose is to stay sober in order to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.

 

But that is not the statement.  The statement includes the and, making the sentence compound rather than simple.  Dual rather than the single.  Inclusive rather than exlusive.  Expansive instead of limiting.

 

Also, they used primary instead of only or sole or single.  These words, and many others, were available for their use, to limit and proscribe the program’s purpose as they saw fit—and they did not see fit.  An even cursory review of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous will provide abundant evidence that the collective vocabulary of the writers of that text was sufficient for them to exclude discussion of any topic other than alcohol.  They did not.  Indeed, drug use and other now-controversial topics are discussed in the text as related to alcoholism.

 

[It also says in the big book Chapter 6 that Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us, which, um, doesn't mention alcohol at all.]

 

If a group chooses to have a singleness of purpose, and decline to let people share about things other than alcohol, whatevs.  Have at it.  I have been to some awesome single-purpose meetings.

 

But saying that Alcoholics Anonymous itself has a single purpose implies either an inability to understand the difference between 1 and 2 at best, and a narrowness of mind, or selfishness of purpose at worst.

 

If we walk out of meetings because we have different views than other people in those meetings, is love and tolerance really our code?

 

 

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upon retiring

May 16, 2009 in as I retire | No comments

Part of what I am supposed to do each night is to consider whether I have been resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid each day, and to determine what corrective measures should be taken.

 

My sexuality (of the homo variety) is a recurring theme here.  Not because the whole world needs to know I’m gay, but I feel like my home group probably should.  My home group does, we just don’t talk about it.  I tell myself that I choose my pronouns to keep myself and the group comfortable, but is that just a big lie?  Am I being honest with myself?  Do I think any of them really care? Do I have a resentment?

 

On one level, it’s a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and my sexuality shouldn’t matter.  But on a practical level, it is a meeting of human beings.  There are things we all choose not to share in meetings.

 

Is a don’t ask/don’t tell policy in small town A.A. a cop out, or a practical compromise?  If I’m thinking about it in terms of whether or not I am being dishonest with the group, it is probably a cop out.

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