Something happened today, which reminded me that patience is not one of my greatest virtues. So, it follows that impatience is one of my major defects. The result of this, as I see it, can be life threatening. The frustration resulting from a lack of patience, as I saw this morning, could be explosive and might end in a drink. And, like Bill said, to drink is to die.
Just something for me to run an inventory on it and then to do something about it.
With me, impatience. as I look back on it, is something that builds up gradually. It’s not like the old AA joke I heard a long time ago: “I prayed for patience and God gave me long lines to wait in”. I might become impatient in a long line, but it’s nothing like the Impatience, which builds over weeks and months. No, for me, it’s the one that begins with the lack of tolerance for other’s behavior, when I forget to follow the guidlines in the tenth step.
I learned my first lessons in patience, when I came into the program. In the beginning, I was often frustrated by a lot of things and a lot of people. I had to learn to hang in and not give up because of these things. Otherwise I would have been out the door in no time. Thanks to my sponsor and a whole lot of others, I learned a lot about tolerance and waiting things out. Not just their words, but their examples guided me through a lot of this. Tolerance began to grow within me and patience followed.
As I progressed through the steps, serenity and peace of mind began to seep into me and the episodes began to be fewer and fewer, with long stretches in between. I can look back and see so many examples of my loss of patience over the years. Some of them are laughable today. Like the time, when I was about ten years sober on a Christmas Eve. I was rushing around all day and losing patience and my temper, when I noticed how nice people were to me. They smiled a lot, as my impatience grew. It was only at the end of the day, when I got home, that I discovered the source of their merriment. My fly was open.
Today, so many years later, as I was reaching the boiling point, I suddenly remembered the words from the twelfth step: to practice these principles in all of our affairs. That came through so loud and clear it was amazing. I walked away and kept my mouth shut. And, just as quickly the inventory of events I had ignored came to mind. No wonder Bill had written those words about eternal vigilance being the price of our sobriety. I had forgotten to practice the spiritual axiom in the tenth step: whenever we’re disturbed there is somethinjg wrong with us.
I cannot tell you how grateful I am for all that has been offered to me through this program. How much I have been given. No one but me knows how I was feeling today. So, to express my gratitude, I decided to share this with you and so unburden myself with this form of the tenth step.