I’m sitting here at my computer, which is right handed. The tower and the mouse are on my right side and they’re in a small space up against the wall. Soooo…my coffee cup has to be on my left side, just because. But, I’m right handed and have to clumsily reach for the coffee with my left hand. A minor irritant, which constantly gets my attention.
You may not be interested, but the Latin word for left is “sinister” and the right is “dexter”. And since we use the word sinister in English to describe something dark and secretive, to reach to the left is to reach into darkness. On the other hand, so to speak, if I reach to my right, I’m doing something dexterous, which is good. So, we say the devil sits on our left shoulder and an angel on our right. A medieval thought, but those who preceded us in those times could read and speak Latin (if they could read) and they just transliterated those two words into our language. But they readily took left handedness to be on the wrong side of the tracks. Thus the word sinister came to mean something like, “that man has a sinister look about him”. They failed to come up with it’s opposite like, “that man has a dexter look about him”. Right handedness was common and so “good”.
I can remember my grandfather telling me, because he was left handed, that his teachers used to beat him across his knuckles if he wrote with his left hand. He had to learn to become right handed to survive school.
Even into the 19th Century they thought there was something wrong with that and they needed to make my grandfather “good”.
The reason I’m going into all of this is that I was struck by something Tom said to me years ago. The coffee on my left side reminded me of it. I wonder how critical I am of others, who may not be working this program in the “right” way. I listen at meetings to people, who obviously have never cracked open the BB and may never have gone beyond step one. Yet, they have been coming to meetings and not drinking for years. I know I have been critical in the past.
I remember going with Tom on an errand one day. He said he was meeting with a man, to deliver a gift, who had been sober for eight years. I sat in the car as Tom went up to the man and gave him the package and talked to him for about 10 mins. or so. I watched the man, whom Tom had told me, didn’t go to meetings. I came up with a judgement that the man was not really “sober”. When Tom got back in the car, I delivered my verdict to him and he turned and shoved a finger into my face. “Listen to me,” he said sternly, “he’s as sober as you and I are. There’s no right way or wrong way to stay sober. Sober is sober.” With that, we drove off.
That was one of those times, when Tom was able to open my mind to other possibilities. He also taught me to keep my opinions to myself. Over the years, I have been able to forget both those lessons. Today I was reminded of that. At the meeting, it was hard to tell who was sober and who wasn’t. It was one of those meetings which quickly turned into a calamity. I had my mental “gavel” out and was pounding the bench in my head, picking out those, who were slated for the gallows and those who would have to serve time. My verdict was final. There was something sinister going on.
It wasn’t until later, when talking to another man, who had arrived at the same verdict, that I remembered. There was no right way or wrong way to stay sober. Everyone of those people had been without a drink for a long time. Who was I to be so “right handed” that I could draw such a conclusion? Was I any more sober than anyone of them? Listening to my own mind, I don’t think so.
Honesty, tolerance, and a true love of God and man. If I don’t take a drink today and go back tomorrow, I will be able to go back and listen with a more open mind. I pray that. It takes some dexterity to wade through this stuff, but that’s the role I’ve been assigned. To be with my own and not above it.