Not just at a meeting, where some of this is brought up, but in other conversations, it comes that we are easily diverted from our primary purpose and the solution. It’s understandable in any of these scenarios. But it can be so dangerous and even fatal.
I was talking to one individual, whom I’ve seen around the meetings. I know him to speak to, but I don’t know him, except that he obviously believes he’s an alcoholic and needs help. I met him at the door as I was leaving the meeting. He had this befuddled look on his face. So I stopped him and asked what was wrong. It seems that his primary purpose now is to stop smoking. All of a sudden it struck me that he’s a relative newcomer. He said he has been making lists of things he wants to accomplish. I asked him if he had a sponsor. He said yes, but he had been talking to a lot of people, also. I said that I thought ! he may have been talking to too many people and maybe he should listen to his sponsor and talk to him pretty much exclusively for a period of time.
Too many voices and opinions can deafen us and plug up our ears to what’s really important.
I told him that we can go off in so many directions and become obsessed by other things to the point where we lose our direction. I told him that maybe, just maybe, he might want to delay his desire to stop smoking and concentrate on staying sober and make that his primary objective. He said that’s just what his sponsor had told him.
What is it about us that wants to mind someone else’s business and reform him or her? I saw this group of men talking to him just before I did. They were really into it with him and he was listening intently to what they were saying. I discovered what they were saying, when he told me what his new objective was. These were men, who are a number of years into the program. Why weren’t they talking to him about staying sober and seeking the solution?
How easily we’re diverted. How many voices and inputs seek to occupy our time. Our eyes and ears are bombarded by so many distractions. Our character defects are inspired to take over by all this stuff being thrown at us. And, too many people, who should know better and should be our examples, feed us so many opinions and load us down with advice, which would be better left unsaid than to say anything.
I had just talked to a young man, who had twenty one days, and was having a hard time dealing with guilt. I asked him if he had a sponsor he could talk to. He said he had a temporary sponsor. I asked him if he was going to be sober on a temporary basis. Why not ask this man to! be his permanent sponsor? I told him we all had this kind of problem when we came in. We dealt with it by trying to apply ourselves to getting sober and coming to meetings…and not drinking, one day at a time, and talk with a sponsor. How easy for us old timers to forget that.
As I was talking to this young man, another man, with more than a few years, ran up an interuppted to ask me about a bible he had just gone out and gotten hold of. He started frantically paging through it and asked me about the epistle of St. James. Did I know where to find it? I asked him why. He said he was going to read and study the bible and wanted to get back to what went on in the early days of AA. He said he had been going to the program “Back to Basics” and they had recommended it. I told him that without direction he would be better off tossing the book away and get back to studying the BB. This is a man, whom! I know will become obsessed with this.
Without the memory of why I came here and why I’m here, I’m like a man without a compass. I might go off in any direction and lose my way. I think I’ll stick with what I know. It’s worked so far and given me so much.
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