I used to get our purposes mixed up. There was our primary purpose and then there was our singleness of purpose. Whenever these were mentioned my mind would equate the two together. It took a while to sort them out. And being the way I was, I would never ask a question. I just assumed they were the same thing. I don’t know when it was that I came to realize they were two different things. But one day, it seems I did.
My primary purpose is to stay sober. The singleness of purpose is to maintain the subject of this program to one thing and one thing only; it’s about alcohol and nothing else.
The only reason I bring this up is because I often make a lot of assumptions about what I and others are doing. I often assume that we’re all together on our primary purpose. I also assume that we’re together on our singleness of purpose. Like my sponsor used to ask me, “why did you come here?” and I would answer, “to get sober”. He would ask me this, when I was going through my whining ways. “Are you?”, he would ask. I would answer yes. Then he would say, “Then stop whining. You got what you came here to get.”
Just because I got it, does not mean, necessarily, that others do. People often forget or just are ignorant of the traditions, which are there for us to keep this program together. For instance the First Tradition. AA Unity. We’re all here for a common purpose and must put our wants and desires aside for the good of the whole. Otherwise, as this tradition states, we’ll be back at the “Stone Age” of alcoholism and there won’t be any groups to go to. We’ll be on our own again; alone.
The common purpose of this program is to help one another to get sober and to help us stay sober. And just as my primary purpose is to stay sober, so the Group’s primary purpose is to carry this message to the alcoholic who is still suffering. Old timer or newcomer. Suffering is suffering at any point in time. The message, as I have learned from experience, can relieve me from suffering. And the message is that there is a solution. And the solution is that there is a Power Greater than myself, Who can restore me to sanity.
Sanity, which can prevent me from taking that first fatal drink, is absent, when I find myself overwhelmed and obsessed with some problem, which has diverted me from my primary purpose. When I come to a meeting and try to overwhelm the group with my agenda or obsession, my problem, I am trying to steer the course of AA to another place. AA’s singleness of purpose gets lost. And AA’s singleness of purpose is alcohol. It’s not about relationships or we would call it RA. It’s not about cocaine or it would be CA. It’s not about jobs or it would be called JA. No, it’s AA and that’s it’s only subject.
That’s what saved my life and my sanity! That AA was about what was killing me and driving me insane. It was alcohol. If I want the solution to this problem, I’m going to have to put my other so called problems and accept what has been so freely offered to me. I have to surrender and accept the solultion. It’s so simple.
It’s up to me, when I find others, so obsessed with “their problem”, that they insist on making it the subject of a meeting, to speak up and steer the subject back to the solution.
A good friend suggested that we talk about singleness of purpose and I was thinking about that. So there.