Back when I was about five years sober, my sponsor got me to lead a meeting at another group across town. I was really nervous and worried that I was going to mess this up. I really was thinking of me and afraid that I would make a fool out of myself. It was still all about me.
Anyway, on the way over, my sponsor told me that the lead for this particular meeting was to choose the subject of the meeting. I told him I was too anxiety ridden to think of anything. He told gave me a copy of the Grapevine and told me to look through it and find a topic. I did. It was gossip.
We got to the meeting and it was packed. My sponsor accompanied me to the front and sat with me and the meeting began. In spite of the fact that I was beginning to hyperventilate I introduced myself and opened the meeting on the topic of goaaip. Then I began to call on people I didn’t know. There were about twenty people against the wall on my right. I went throujgh that row in about five minutes, because each one of them said they didn’t have a problem with gossiip, because they never gossiped. At that point my sponsor leaned over and whispered to me that we must have made a mistake, because this couldn’t be an AA meeting.
Finally in desperation I called on an older man down front, who annouced that one of the biggest problems he had was talking about others. I later learned from him that he had about 30 years sobriety and that the twenty on the wall were chronic slippees.
What a relief that was. The meeting went well as person after person talked about their problem with gossip and how they were dealing with this problem. And most of them said that they had to learn to mind their own business.
What I need to say is that I chose that subject that night, because I suffered from being a gossip in AA. I was always talking about others. Often I find myself today, slipping back into this same old mode of not minding my own business. But it’s what I say about another which is at the crux of the problem. Bill tells us in the BB that we talk about others. Except he charges us with talking about others in a charitable way. Not talking about their faults or excesses.
Of course, if I would only mind my own business and not that of others, I wouldn’t be thinikng about this. What is my business? My business is to stay sober and try to help another alcoholic achieve sobriety. If I’m truly trying to work my own program, I know that I wouldn’t have time to nose around in someone elses private affairs. I have enough problems of my own to take care of. If I were paying attention to myself, the heavens would be filled with the Seventh Step prayers.
Anyway, something came up yesterday and reminded me about this and I was thinking about it last night and this morining. It reminded me that I need to pay attention to my sober thinking and not the thinking or actions of others. My plate is already full, if I would just look.