A friend of mine used to say to me, when someone told us something and had left, “more to be revealed”. Thomas Moore (Care of the Soul) said that as we live, we tell our stories. Unfinished stories it’s true; but we’re always telling them. The BB says that we are to tell someone our complete story.
Ebby’s story is finished. Someone else is telling his story. He’s garnered this from what Ebby told others and what others revealed to the biographer. And, what we learn from Ebby’s story is so valuable to those of us, who cherish sobriety. What is being revealed, as I read his story is that the sober life can be a hazardous one. There are pitfalls and minefields to be avoided. For what is in Ebby’s story is a reflection of all of us. One of those things, a charcteristic of his, was his view of himself. Ebby often saw himself as a victim, who was often treated unfairly by life and others. This was one of his failings, which enabled him to return to drinking. Let’s put it this way; he was a victim. A victim of his disease. How he felt about himself was a justification only, in order to let himself back into the practice of his alcoholism.
How I identify with him. Often I came to the same conclusions he did and it helped me to continue to drink, regardless of the consequences of my drinking. It’s easy to read his story and to see him as a pitiful object on the one hand, but it’s another to step back and see him as one of us. In doing so, his life’s story becomes more than a matter of simple interest, it comes alive, because I’m reading my own unfinished story.
How often have I fallen into the trap my character defects have set for me. Bill tells us that justifiable anger is a dangerous pitfall to be avoided at all costs. He tells us that such anger can take us back out to a drink. Yet, the minute I see myself victimized by someone else, I’ve fallen into this trap. We call people, who think this way as suffering from a persecution complex. That was me and so many others I have talked to over the years.
Thank God for the spiritual axiom in the tenth step. I hated that statement, when I first came into the program. In fact, it was the source of irritation for a long time. It’s still uncomfortable at times, when I want to see others as the source of my discomfort. Whenever we’re disturbed there is something wrong with us. No way! I would tell my sponsor. It was their fault. Always them. I had a right to be angry with them. In the heat of my anger, I couldn’t see that what I was really doing was setting myself up to return to a drink.
It would be easy to tell myself that I’ve lost my temper and I haven’t drank yet. It is just as easy to tell myself that my bouts with self pity and resentment have not cost me my sobriety. But it’s not so easy, if I stop and think of the many, who have lost their sobriety, because of these very things. Am I so different? If I’m honest with myself, I can’t say that.
The interesting thing about the spiritual axiom is that it is spiritual. And this is the solution. It’s a spirtual solution. Poor Ebby missed this. He missed the message in the second step. That’s what I keep thinking as I continue to read this story of his. It’s nothing complex. It’s simple. But then, we’re not simple people. We think in a complicated way. The statement that we can’t see the forest for the trees applies.
I read another story from the BB before I fell asleep. It was a story of a woman, who had to go to prison before she got the message and got sober. It took imprisonment to open up her mind and her heart. She got the message. It was simple.
I’ll keep reading. More to be revealed.