11.11.08
The Virtues of Silence
Something that came up in a meeting, when no one had a topic. What are the virtues of remaining silent?
For starters, there’s the famous “restraint of pen and tongue.” Calvin Coolidge said “I never got in trouble for something I didn’t say.” (Although this isn’t strictly true. If your wife asks “do these pants make my ass look fat?” you will be in deep yogurt unless say “no.” Silence would be bad. But I digress…)
There’s the association between silence and meditation, or prayer, as some people like to call it. Only by slowing down and being still do we have a chance to pick up on what’s really going on in the world. It’s a chance to stop the endless brain-chatter and let the important things float to the surface.
There is also the whole matter of listening. (Fran Lebowitz said “The opposite of talking isn’t listening; it’s waiting for your turn to talk.) One of the points of meetings is that the collective experience, strength, and hope of the group is most likely (sarcasm) greater than my own.
Finally (for me, for now anyway), if I’m silent in a meeting and the chair calls on me and I yammer something inane, well, it’s not like I volunteered. Whereas if I volunteer and yammer, well, you get the idea.
10.30.08
We’re all alone. Except when we’re not.
It didn’t matter who I was with, how many people were there, what brought us together. It didn’t matter, because I was still alone. Always. They just didn’t get it. How could they? If you gathered up a bunch of men, would you expect them to know what it’s like to be pregnant? They might have some “book learning” about it, or know someone who has experienced it, but they couldn’t really understand it.
But when I go to a twelve-step meeting, I know I’m with “my” people. Sure, there are differences, but we’re all there because we know how it feels to be powerless, and how it feels to think you’re alone.
I remember, early in recovery, I was feeling completely crappy, mostly because (I think), I had taken the drinking out of my life, but hadn’t added much of anything (except meetings) to replace it. I was sitting at a table in the public library, and felt someone, walking behind me, run their hand across my shoulders. Weird. I turned to look, at it was someone I had seen at several meetings. I didn’t know her name, we’d never spoken, I don’t even know if I’d ever heard her talk at a meeting. She smiled and kept walking. And all of a sudden I wasn’t alone.
10.01.08
Egomaniac mostly. Oh, and inferiority complex too.
An egomaniac with an inferiority complex.
Of all the (many many) saying of twelve-step recovery, this is the one that whacked me most precisely with the two-by-four of “I belong here.”
I am wonderful. I am funny and brilliant and suave and a fine conversationalist. I can hold my own against just about anybody. I can handle whatever life (or my boss) throws at me. I just need, you know, a couple of drinks to get me started, loosen me up, whatever.
I am a piece of shit. Any second now someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and say “what the hell do you think you’re doing and who do you think you’re fooling?” I can’t get out of my own way. Everything I touch turns to ashes. But if I could just get, you know, a couple of drinks, I’d find a way to relax, pull myself together, say something clever, make you like me just a little, survive another day.
So now, without, you know, a couple of drinks to alter me, there are days when I remember that, although I have some fine qualities, I’m not Uberman. And although I have my faults, as long as I think about what’s important and put effort into doing what’s right, I’ve done what I can do to help the people who matter to me recognize my worth. (The convoluted nature of that sentence is entirely the fault of that other AA concept, letting go of the outcome. Which is a topic for another time.)
09.22.08
Dumbest. Commercial. Ever.
Seriously. I just saw a true “what were they thinking” ad.
We see a bullet flying through the air (slowed down a great deal, so it’s clear). It flies into the neck of a bottle and crashes through the bottom of the bottle. Out of the spray of broken glass, a car emerges.
Is it an ad about car safety? About the dangers of drinking and driving?
No. It’s an ad for the car.
Dumbest. Ad. Ever.
09.15.08
Keep Coming Back. Really.
We hear it all the time. “Keep coming back.”
People say it as a mantra when a newcomer talks about how hard it is. Or when someone slips and wonders if the program can really help them. And mostly, we mean it when we say it.
But I’ve heard some old-timers … no, wait. Not old-timers. More like “middle-timers.” Anyway, there are sometimes people who grumble about people who slip over and over. Expressions of “they’re just wasting our time” or “they’re not serious about sobriety.”
While I recognize that some days it can be hard to applaud convincingly when seeing someone get their umpteenth 30-day chip, I think the grumblers are missing the point. As far as I know, we have all slipped many many times. Some of us do it in the rooms. Some of us do it on our own, before we ever find our way into the program.
Think of all the folks who NEVER find their way in. I betcha many of them tell themselves “tomorrow I won’t do this to myself again” over and over. We would welcome them gladly if they ever found one of our clubhouses, despite the fact that they’re big-time slippers.
We should celebrate the courage of anyone who comes back, no matter how many times it happens. Hell, we should celebrate each and every one of us who attends a meeting. We’re miracles.
So quit your bitching.
Okay, I’m done now…
08.18.08
A Conundrum
Most of the meetings I go to are pretty loose. We suggest that there be no cross-talk, but it’s usually okay, unless it goes too far. But one thing I hear a lot is “that topic didn’t have anything to do with alcoholism.”
Humbug, says I. As I was reminded just the other day, only the first step mentions alcohol. The other eleven deal with life, with character, with thoughts and actions. As far as I’m concerned, anything that threatens my serenity is a valid topic.
I guess I just need to attend meetings of people who feel more or less the same way. And, perhaps, the people complaining about this could do the same.
08.11.08
Sign of the Times
Here’s a story I heard in a recent meeting.In more or less his words:
While driving through a rural area, I spotted a sign: AA Salvage Auto. Spread over a hillside were row on row of wrecked cars. I wondered if they were all from DWI accidents? Probably not. I know that when I came to AA, I thought I was junk, a wreck.
As I got closer to the sign, I saw the recycling symbol (not unlike our triangle in a circle) and the words “This group recycles.” Fortunately, my group does the same thing. I’ve been recycled and I’ve been salvaged.
08.06.08
They Just Don’t Get It
It’s not their fault, but our friends and family outside of AA just don’t understand what this disease is like for us. Even alcoholics not in AA don’t get some of it, because they haven’t had their thinking validated and challenged through conversations with hundreds of others. Anyway, here’s what brought this up for me.
This past weekend my father-in-law visited us. (Have I mentioned that my adorable spouse is also in AA? Knowing that would help this story. Maybe.) We often go out to Sunday breakfast when he visits, but I told him that this weekend we both planned to go to the Sunday morning meeting, as it was a medallion meeting and adorable spouse just hit a milestone. His response? “Oh.”
Which reminded me that I got a similar response from my siblings when I shared my fourth anniversary with them. They just don’t get it.
And then, at the medallion meeting, I saw how everyone clapped and celebrated each medallion recipient, whether it was for 3 months or 30 years. Why? Because we get it. This stuff is hard, and failure is fatal. So every win, every 24 hours, is a BIG win. I’m so glad I found this community of people who DO get it.
08.04.08
Ain’t It Cool?
A very neat thing happened at a meeting yesterday.
There’s this relatively-new thirty-something guy who clearly goes to more meetings than I do. I mean, every time I go to a meeting, there he is… Anyway, I like him, because he takes himself seriously without being all full of himself.
For the past couple of months, every time he’s shared, he includes “and I’ve been sober for 37 days” or whatever. Very precise. Clearly keeping track as he gets his footing. Well, last night he said “and I’ve been sober for 87 days. Or 86. Something like that.”
Ain’t it cool? No matter how rocky we are, no matter how hard those first few days, weeks, months are, before too long we get to a point where we no longer know EXACTLY how long we’ve been trudging the road to happy destiny. And I think I speak for many of us when I say that before we got to that point, we had trouble believing we’d ever get to that point.
07.15.08
Leeches. Bloodsuckers. Poopheads.
So I decided it might be nice to add a link to the AA website, and, being a detailed-oriented type, I thought it might be nice to fact-check. You know, so that I got the right link.
As it happens, the right link is AA.org.
The wrong link is, well, I’m not going to link it here. But I will send you to a lovely article about the lawsuit over it.
So do us all a favor – use the real site, and promise to never, ever go to the imposter. Schmucks. (Not you… them. You I like.)
