Years and years ago, I saw a movie, starring Gary Cooper called Good Sam. It was about a man, who tried to do a good deed for everyone he met. His problem was that what he tried to do didn’t always work out. I remember one scene, where he saw an overweight woman struggling to run up the street toward the bus stop. He jumped out in front of the bus and stopped it with hands rasised. The angry bus driver and his passengers sat there waiting and of course the woman ran by the bus stop. She didn’t want the bus. I always remember the look on the face of the bus driver, as he put it in gear and started to run Sam over.
Good intentions are not always going to achieve good results. Yet the BB tells us that everyday we must try to play the good samaritan. We might just fail, but we must try. That’s the part, in Working With Others, that tells us that our sobriety depends on working with another alcoholic.
I talk to others everyday and some tell me that they just don’t have the time or energy to spend trying to do that. Others complain that there are no opportunities, because rehabs have virtually wiped out the twelfth step. Both of these arguments are probably valid. Yet the words are there and they are just as true today, as they were back when they were written. Our founders experience proved that. So does mine, even though I’ve often tried and failed in attempting to achieve this objective.
A study was done a few years back of AA and a consensus taken of members on this very subject. The authors finally reached the conclusion that there was an atmosphere in AA, generally, that conveyed the message “that now that I’ve got mine, you’ll have to get yours”. In other words, people wanted to be left alone and going to meetings was enough. It kind of reminded me of a meeting I went to one time on the Ninth Step. The leader, an old timer, told the meeting that the only person he had harmed was himself and he didn’t owe amends to anyone.
The rest of the group picked up on this and everyone said the same thing. What a crock! Like the survivor of the tornado in the BB said, “Ain’t it grand the wind stopped blowing.”
We’re never ever going to work this program perfectly, but we must try, if we are to stay sober. I know that I must. Bill said that we have to work toward perfection, even knowing that we will never get there. Otherwise, we’ll fall far short of what we’re trying to achieve.
I remember my sponsor was always reaching his hand out to the newcomer and the man coming back. I can remember him getting up and leaving the meeting and going out and asking the man, who had just walked out of a meeting and asking him to come back and try the coffee and donuts. He was always carrying the message.
He lived and breathed the program. He was always grateful for the gift he had been given and tried to show it.
I was thinking today on how the twelfth step is the pinnacle of what we have been trying to achieve in the steps we have taken previously. How we are instructed to try everyday to put the will of God foremost in our minds.
Not an easy task for someone like me, who by nature is contrary and rebellious. But, I must put aside my wants for my needs.
Like I said, just thinking.
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