Speaking of the tenth step, though I might never mention it in these thoughts I send, we were talking about that today. What I was reminded of was how much we tend to get into crisis over the smallest things. One day my sponsor, who was probably fed up with my carping, said to me: “Ned, you could turn a runny nose into an adaventure”. Not his exact words, but you get the gist.
It reminded me of the first part of the tenth step in ghe 12&12. “Then comes the acid test: can we stay sober, keep in emotional balance, and live to good purpose under all conditions?” Those words, “keep in emotional balance” hit me right between the eyes. My first reaction is “of course I can”. Oh yeah? Then how come I sometimes find myself turning an ant hill into a mountain? Whatever happened to rule #62, which says, “Don’t take yourself so damn seriously”?
The problem is that I sometimes forget why I came here. I forget to pause and take a deep breath and back off. I forget that whatever the problem I think I’m confronted with is truly a luxury. Had I not have had the good fortune to get sober and free of my alcoholic problem I probably would have been dead and never had the opportunity to be in my present circumstances. How small my problems today are compared to what I was facing when I was out there drinking myself to death. How little everything is in the light of what was going on when I found myself enslaved to alcohol. When I found that I could not stop drinking and was faced with insanity and death by suicide.
If I would just stop and see what my problems ae all about, I would see that they are really of a spiritual nature, regardless of how they appear to my eyes. I am so short sighted, that I am blind to the reality behind them. I went back to what Fred said in More About Alcoholism. “Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all my problems. I have since been brought into a way of living infinitely more satisfying and, I hope, more useful than the life I had before. My old manner of living was by no means a bad one, but I would not exchange its best moments for the worst I have now. I would not go back to it even if I could.”
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