Acceptance 4.17.12

In thinking about the concept of acceptance, I decided that it is such a big idea, I need to write more than one post about it.  It is one of most important concepts in AA for me, and it touches every single aspect of my life.

My understanding of acceptance in AA is, as is everything else here, purely my understanding.  I believe my understanding has enabled me to stay sober for a very long time, but it is only my understanding.

I don’t think that acceptance is stressed in the AA writings of the Big Book or the Twelve and Twelve.  It’s there, but not stressed.  I believe that acceptance got its push forward in the Third Edition of the Big Book, in one of the stories.  It appeared on page 449 and that page number was a bit of a mantra for some people when I first got sober.  Many people would answer most difficulties with the word, “four forty nine,” meaning look up acceptance, and that is the answer to any given difficulty.

The passage reads:

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation-some fact of my life -unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake.  Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

It was moved to page 417 in the fourth edition of the Big Book.

Just even this passage is so full of meaning, I find it hard to even begin.  For this reason I think I will write regularly on acceptance until I’ve exhausted it and myself.  I hope to have a deeper understanding by doing this.

So the first thing I’ll write about it is that this is from a story, one alcoholic’s story, and it is that person’s perception, nothing more.  It has resonated deeply with many people for many years and in my opinion it is the most important thing said in any story (apart from Bill’s, I guess) for this reason, but it is still only a small part of one person’s story.

Personally, I don’t believe that everything is the way it’s supposed to be at this moment, although I hold out the possibility that it is.  In other words, I don’t know if God influences the tiniest thing that happens here on Earth, in fact I think that God doesn’t, but I’m in no way sure enough of that to claim I know it to be true, or to argue with anyone who feels that everything is indeed the way it’s supposed to be.  I also don’t believe that nothing happens by mistake.  I believe in chance, not fate.

But the passage still holds lots of meaning for me, and it has influenced me and eased my way a lot through the years, maybe more than any other passage, or at least up there in the top ten.  There are parts of it that seem infinitely true to me, and beyond that, the concept of acceptance has been one of the most important concepts of my recovery.  So I’ll keep coming back to it for a while.

This All Meant, Of Course (Step Twelve continued)

This all meant, of course, that we were still far off balance.  When a job still looked like a mere means of getting money rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition of money for financial independence looked more important than a right dependence upon God, we were still the victims of unreasonable fears.  And these were fears which make a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite impossible.

Rarely do I experience a “this was meant for me to read it right now” moment, but this is one.

These were fears which make a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite impossible.

The nature of my job is that it happens, from time to time, that I worry about losing my job.  It is regulated my many entities and the regulations and regulators fill volumes.  My job is not protected or unionized in any way.  If I am wrongly fired, the most I will get is unemployment payments.  Another aspect of the nature of my job is that I work with fragile, fragile people.  The fragility and the regulations and rules all combine to give me many opportunities every single day to do the wrong thing.  And sometimes I do the wrong thing.

So it happens every few years, I think, that I worry about losing my job.  That is happening now to me.  And as usual I won’t know for some time how this particular situation will play out.  It is not unlike waiting for tests results in fact, it’s a lot like that.  Because all the while I know that while I’m focused on this, some other thing could be conspiring right now to bring me down.

Which it hasn’t.  Not yet.  Not one time that I worried, was I in danger.  And my worries are couched in the cushiest of human circumstances that anyone ever had.  It embarrasses me to list them.  But there they are.  If I lose my job I will not lose my – health insurance – marriage – children – home – pets – lifestyle – retirement – friends – sobriety – or anything else, really, but my job.

I love my job.  I’ve been at it for almost 14 years and the experience and relationships are irreplaceable and precious.  They are also not mine forever, but only for a time, and I don’t know how much time.

I have never looked at my job as a mere means of getting money.  It’s hard work and it doesn’t pay well at all, not compared to what it asks.  It has always been an opportunity for service and sometimes that service can be quite humble, like wiping someone’s butt.  Financial independence rather than a right dependence on God?  I have more of a problem with this one.  Financial independence is important, and I don’t know that I could be serene without it.  Depending on God is great, as far as it goes, but I know that as I write, people are starving to death for a lack of food, and that they could be me.

Am I missing something there?  I know that I have far, far, far more than I need or deserve.  I’m not really afraid of starving to death because of my circumstances, I think that I won’t ever starve to death.  I don’t feel special or blessed or chosen in that way, just lucky.

But back to me and my job.  The lesson I keep trying to learn better is that these times teach me I have only today.  Today I have the job.  These times help me appreciate, during the hard times at my job, that I have it and I love it all the more for having been afraid of losing it.  That keeps happening to me, and I’m glad.  I’m acquiring more serenity and appreciation as I get older and that is all good.  And all due to the program.

And I feel like a bit of a failure that my anxiety peaks so high on these occasions.  There’s something I’m missing.  I’m not done learning yet.

 

The Fourth and the Tenth (Steps)

This is on my mind.  I have a friend who, with a few years sober, keeps doing fourth and mini- fourth steps.  She said that none of her sponsors ever talked to her about steps 10, 11 and/or 12.  Another woman I know has repeatedly slipped over several years, and has had two sponsors, and though the sponsors talked to her about a fourth step …… well, the way she put it is that when she asked them what she’s doing wrong, they couldn’t tell her.  Yet her fourth step remains a huge mountain her mind that she has yet to climb.

I was listening to a “Clancy” CD on the way home from work and he said that repeated and constant fourth steps are a socially acceptable way to stay completely self-absorbed.  He also said, as I guess we see every day, that many many people who climb the first three steps fail to do a fourth step and beyond.

As for my personal experience, I’ve done three formal fourth steps over 27 years of sobriety.  This has worked for me.  I anticipate that if I live long enough I will do another many years hence.  I wouldn’t call these constant or repeated.

My understanding of the tenth step is that there are two distinct and important parts of it.  Continued to take personal inventory is one part, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it is another part.  Often the parts go together, but not always.

It was a great relief and revelation to me to promptly admit when I’m wrong and I know that, compared to the way I was before the program, it has saved personal relationships, especially at work.  It was a freeing proposition when I first employed it.

But the continued inventory is almost more important.  If, for example, I am jealous, this is a character defect and I want to list it on my daily inventory.  If I fumed and stewed and made myself miserable with my jealousy, I don’t think I necessarily have to apologize to anyone, depending on what I did that day, or failed to do.  But for the sake of my argument say I had no responsibilities that day, and rather than enjoying the free time, I made myself miserable feeling jealous.  No harm done to anyone but me.

But say in my jealousy I snooped somewhere I shouldn’t.  Then I might owe an apology and and amend (a change).  Now I could wonder if the person I snooped on is better off not knowing I did that but that is beside my point.

I try to look out for excess negative emotion and in a daily (or more frequent) inventory think of which character defect is at play resulting in my excess negative emotion.  If the problem is bad enough or frequent enough I also try to think about how to do away with the defect, how to ask God to remove it and be able to let it go.  I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again, expecting and getting the same result.  All that, to me, is tenth step, not fourth.

Now all that confused me but I think I’ll go with it and move on to something simpler . . .

Even When We Were Well Reestablished (Step Twelve continued)

Even when we were well reestablished in our business, these terrible fears often continued to haunt us.  This made us misers and penny pinchers all over again. Complete financial security we must have–or else.  We forgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning power considerably above average; we forgot the immense goodwill of our brother A.A.’s who were only too eager to help us to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the actual or potential financial insecurity of every human being in the world.  And, worst of all, we forgot God.  In money matter we had faith only in ourselves, and not too much of that.

I’ve come a long way in my attitude about money and I’ve overcome a lot of fear of financial insecurity.  These days I’m more likely to suffer from financial resentment about the cost to my family of being gay.  But in general I do well with it.

I really like the thought about the actual or potential financial insecurity of every human being in the world.  Some people, I know, are so financially insecure that they starve to death or freeze to death and I am not special or chosen or different, I’m just lucky.

I hear it over and over, how “God” comes through for this person or that person in this time of need or in these circumstances.  I just don’t believe it.  “God” fails to come through for others.  Was it “their time?”  Am I special and protected, until it’s “my time?”

So I think about the eye of the needle, and how difficult it is to live right while having so very much in a material sense.  To whom much is given, much will be required.  Even as I sit here, my kitchen light is on, illuminating an empty kitchen.  I don’t know how I got here, but that’s where my mind went.

Willpower

I don’t have enough when it comes to cats or books.

Sometimes I hear people get balled up about willpower.  Willpower will not protect an alcoholic from drinking.  That’s why I’ve belonged to AA for 33 years, 27 of them in continuous sobriety.  And I should probably correct that.  Willpower would not protect this alcoholic from drinking.  There are many people who, I hear tell, quit drinking without AA.  I can’t say that I’m happy for them, since they are missing the best thing in my life, but I’m glad that if they’re alcoholic, they’re not drinking.

I couldn’t do it.  As long as I had a little hope that I could drink successfully, even if alcoholically, I was driven to try, sooner or later.  It’s a fact of my alcoholism that once I took a drink, I could not control my drinking or predict the results.  Sometimes I was able to stop without getting drunk, or after getting drunk, but at least when I had planned to stop.  But much of the time I could not stop when I wanted to or should have, and that’s what makes me say I’m powerless over alcohol.

Now, when I’m sober, I have a choice.  It would be an act of my will and a failure of my willpower to pick up a drink.  I know that if I do pick up a drink, my power of choice is gone or severely impaired.  I can’t choose when or if I will stop.  Right now I can choose.  As long as I choose not to drink, I retain the ability to choose.

It’s taken willpower for me to work the program, go to meetings down through the decades, read the books, talk to the people.  It takes willpower to continue to try to turn my will over to God.  There have been a million intermediate steps down the road that I’ve had to take.  Time after time I chose not to go to the meeting, not to use the phone, not to read the book, not to fortify my defenses against drinking and dying.

And so those pesky problems other than alcohol.  My willpower fails me when I buy too many books or obtain too many pets or eat too much or choose not to exercise.  And/or when I choose not to use the tools I have on those problems.  That is really it.  I don’t practice the principles in all my affairs and so some of my affairs are still unmanageable.  And as long or as much as I stay in that state, to be honest with myself, I really haven’t turned my will and my life over to a higher power.

Have We Alcoholics in A.A. Got (Step Twelve continued)

Have we alcoholics in A.A. got, or can we get, the resources to meet these calamities which come to so many?  These are the problems of life which we could never face up to.  Can we now, with the help of God as we understand Him, handle them as well and as bravely as our non-alcoholic friends often do?  Can we transform these calamities into assets, sources of growth and comfort to ourselves and those about us?  Well, we surely have a chance if we switch from “two-stepping” to “twelve-stepping,” if we are willing to receive that grace of God which can sustain and strengthen us in any catastrophe.

Can we handle them as well as our non-alcoholic friends often do?  Often, we can handle them much much better than non-alcoholics.  I am certain of that.

The resources to meet calamities are awesome things.  The steps and the people of AA are truly wonderful resources.  For me it’s terribly true that when I was drinking, I couldn’t face up to the problems of life.  I also had a really difficult time of it when life was basically problem-free.  Now I’ve learned a new way of life, and it does help me meet calamities.

A truly inspiring man in my local AA area lost his wife recently.  They drank together and got sober together and had a scary story.  She died young, and I often look at him and wonder how he copes with it.  The other night at a meeting he expressed that things always turn out OK for him.  I can’t imagine how it seems that way to him, yet I know it does.  He is one power of example and potential source of hope and strength for me, and there are so many others.

Finally, the “grace of God” is an AA phrase that I have a bit of a problem with.  I don’t know why God’s grace should be given to me, and not to someone else.  There are more deserving people, maybe, but shouldn’t we just all be recipients of God’s grace?

The last line expresses my best way to comprehend this concept.  “If we are willing to receive that grace of God.”  For as long as I fought the program or continued to drink and do it my way, I was not willing to receive the grace of God that was there.  It reminds me of that story where a woman is on her roof during a flood waiting for rescue.  She turns away the boat and the helicopter because she’s waiting for God to save her.  She dies, and then asks God why he didn’t save her.  God replies that he sent a boat and a helicopter for her.

So I make some small sense of it that way, that people who continue to suffer are often closed to the help that is offered.  But I’m afraid that in some ways, some people aren’t capable of receiving or using the help.  Then God’s grace bestowed on me but not them fails to make sense for me again.  And yet again, we are not always sustained and strengthened in any catastrophe.  There comes for many people circumstances that they simply, really, totally, just cannot handle, whether open to God’s grace or not.

Think, Think, Think

This “slogan” has different meanings.  Think the drink through, to the end, to the jail/vomit/humiliation/danger/sickness/rehab/death.  “First thought – wrong” in which I needed to learn that my first reactions were almost always not appropriate or accurate or healthy.  AND I need to say that I don’t know why some people put the sign up side down, but I love it, and I do it, even when it’s not my meeting, if I can get away with it.

Today, I’m trying (still) to change some of my harmful thinking patterns.  As more is revealed to me, I see, for example, that I often ascribe to other people intentions that aren’t theirs.  So, for example, if someone asks me, “Why did you do that?”  I may hear a reproach when what was really there was a question, a request for information.

I often may think something is or should be obvious, so a question can rub me the wrong way, either sounding like a reproach to me or …… like someone hasn’t thought about it, is just talking to make noise.

I really can have those thoughts about people.

So, without incriminating details, I very recently had a period of a few hours when I was desperately, appropriately worried about a loved one.  I did not know if this person was all right, and had good reason to fear that she wasn’t.

I’d like to get better at adjusting my thought patterns during such an episode, and thankfully I don’t get many chances to practice.  When the chips are down and the anxiety is on, these are some of the things I think

• Wait to worry.  I know I may get bad news.  It isn’t here yet.  There will be plenty of time to mourn, be terrified, react and adjust to the bad news later, when it is actually here.
• I don’t trust God to make everything all right.  Everything is not always all right, and if there is a God, this is God’s will.  This is the only way it makes any sense at all to me.
• I don’t feel comfortable bargaining with God.  I feel there are millions of people in the world in worse shape than I am, in more need than I am.  I don’t feel, even when I’m very scared for a loved one, that I can ask God to make it come out the way I want it to be.
• Given that, when I do learn of the favorable outcome, for the moment, I thank God.  It makes no sense to me, and it is me doing it.

These truly terrifying times are few and far between in my life, and I’m very grateful for that.  They are so awful when they come that I do want to think about it, and get better at it, and think, think, think, in a better and healthier way.

Spirituality

1.	the state or quality of being dedicated to God, religion, or spiritual things or values, esp as contrasted with material or temporal ones
2.	the condition or quality of being spiritual

Being dedicated to spiritual things or values, especially as contrasted with material or temporal ones. Inasmuch as I, or anyone, claims to try to live mostly by the AA program, with sobriety being my first priority, I think that I am “spiritual” in that sense.

Belief in a higher power is essential, but I think that using the group, or the program, as a higher power can, if it has to, go a long long way toward a lasting sobriety.

I don’t know about a supernatural being.  I don’t know if anyone or anything acts upon the earth, the people, the weather, or cancer cells.  I don’t know why bad things happen to good people.

God as I fail to understand God may be a supreme being, may be all the good in the world wrapped up in the cosmos, may be manifest in Jesus and/or others or maybe not.  I don’t know.

I know that I’m dedicated to material and temporal things way more than I should be.  I know that helping other people and animals pleases me, to a certain extent.  I’d like to think I do it for other reasons, but it pleases me.  I know that I can’t take the temporal and material things with me.  I hope I can take the good I do, or that it somehow goes forward into the future, but it may not.

I know that I was a hopeless drunk almost dead at the age of 21.  I know that the solution to my fatal problem lies within a spiritual program, one that is not dedicated to material or temporal things.

These things are clear to me.  I’d have a hard time separating “spiritual” from “intellectual,” so I think that for today I will not try.

The Spiritual Part of the Program (part 2)

For my own path, after I was confirmed against my will (documented in “My Story”), I left church for good.  When I first started AA, I didn’t pray in meetings, though I did hold hands.  Through my six years of failing to stay sober in AA, somewhere along the line, in many desperate moments, I tried praying to stay away from the first drink.

A concept that turned it for me was that of willingness.  Are you willing to accept that there might be a higher power?  Yes, at that point I was.   As the books say, that was what I needed to begin to live on a spiritual basis.  During the years that followed, I went back to the Lutheran church, though I don’t accept a lot of the rules and rituals.  I was just about to seriously consider learning about the Quakers when I met Carole, who was at that time president of the congregation at her Lutheran church.

What it’s like now for me is complicated, as it should be.  I’m skeptical and cynical about many things having to do with all religions.  At times I’m not sure there is a power greater than me in the universe beyond the collected wisdom of any group.  In this way AA is still my higher power, and I would not consider changing my mind about that, not unless I want to die.  At other times I can believe to some degree in some kind of God.

When I think of my spirit, now, it’s mostly in terms of becoming a better person, enlarging my good qualities and continuing to let go of my character defects.  And still I’m skeptical and cynical.  There’s a group of people who I had huge resentments against and anger toward a few years ago, in a shake up at work.  Some of these people are still in my life and some aren’t.  I continue to pray about them and I continue to try to see them in the light of humility, as greater than or equal to me and to everyone else.  I think I’ve improved in this but I’m not sure.  I may just get used to it, and to them.

The Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

~

Reinhold Niebuhr

This is the short version of the prayer that has been used in meetings all the time that I’ve been in AA.  Wikipedia says that Bill Wilson brought this to meetings and that the Grapevine has published it.  There is a longer version, and my view of the longer version is slightly colored by my feeling that I have read a political interpretation of it.  It’s hard for me not to see the longer version that way.

This short version, though, is something I gratefully learned almost immediately and it lasts so well and so long because it is oh-so true.

I’ve come to understand that primarily, all I can change is myself, mostly my attitudes.  Just about anything outside of me is off limits.  I influence people, events, and the physical world, to a very very small degree.  I dare say, not in a self-pitying way, that should I be gone tomorrow, my influence would be almost completely gone five years from now, except for the way I’ve influenced my children in the past, and what they go on to do in the future.

I ask God for serenity to accept almost everything outside of me.  Things I cannot change include but at not limited to: weather, politics, the price of eggs, most illness, disease and death, most poverty, time, the past, my physical limitations, your physical limitations, the opinions of most people, war, football.  Google collage of things I can’t change:  the way you feel, the direction of the wind, heredity, increasing age, anybody’s mind, color, what I am, language, THE WORLD.

I do believe I drank because I couldn’t accept the things I couldn’t change.

Jumping to the end, the wisdom to know the difference is imperative.  Nothing like knocking myself out against the same brick wall over and over and over again.  Honestly, sometimes I do realize after a time that my efforts to change someone else will not work.  Usually.  Not always, because some people in some relationships with me are willing and able to change because I’ve asked them to, or better yet, because I have inspired them to.  I’m also willing to spend time trying to have a small effect on a big change, like doing some small part for an election of a candidate I believe in.  Some would argue I can’t change events, but sometimes I’m willing to try a bit.

Courage to change what I can, for me, is mostly courage to change.  Carole and I were reading an AA book by that name until it got too cold to sit outside, and I’ve been thinking of going back to it.  The change that AA brings is fundamental and profound.  I don’t feel particularly courageous about it, because I, like so many of us, had to be beaten to the ground to get up the courage to change in that way.  Change or die, was the choice, and I’m grateful I was able to make that change.

As the years go by the changes are more subtle, I think, but in a way it gets harder for me.  The first changes were necessary to preserve life and freedom.  The first changes brought huge results and profound improvements.

Now I am a law-abiding citizen.  Now I have a job I can do and that, for today, they’re willing to let me keep.  Now my children will answer the phone if I call (usually) and my wife is glad to see me (today).  Now I have a sobriety I can (mostly) easily and (mostly) happily maintain in a way that fits in my life very well.

Now for me the courage and the will to change what I can don’t come often enough without, still, that wondrous touchstone of growth – pain.