The first time I remember hearing the statement “You may be the only copy of the Big Book someone gets to read”, I was impressed. What a message! And what a burden.
I mean it has a lot of weight. But I was sure it was going to restrict me and tie me down to rigidity. At first it felt, to me, like I was under a searchlight. Then I felt compelled to live the perfect life. If I was to be such an example to others I was going to have to tread very lightly and no make any mistakes. Others were watching, I thought. I think I believed I was a walking Twelfth Step.
However, it wasn’t long before I forgot about this message. It kind of slipped from my memory, as a lot of messages do, and it wasn’t long before I was living a life just jammed packed with mistakes. I was still on the path, not drinking, but a bit wobbley. Stumbling and falling and having to reach out for help an awful lot. When I did think about it, I was convinced I had nothing to offer anyone.
Then I read a passage in the BB. It was in Bill’s Story. It said, “An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature”. I was no longer in my “cups”. I looked around the rooms at my fellow alcoholics and could identify with them. I was not unique. I was just like everyone else. I could see many, imperfect as they were, were walking the talk and genuine copies of the BB. Like them I was sober and on the road to recovery. The burden I once felt was lifted and I could live and act like everyone else. It was not up to me so much, as it was to the observer. If someone wanted what I had, they would have to ask for it.
Early on, I too often lifted the veil on my anonymity and violated the Eleventh Tradition. When I finally realized what I was doing, driving others away from me, I began to relax. It wasn’t up to me. In fact, looking back to the day I hit my bottom, the message I needed came to me through a third party. The person, who gave the man in front of me the message that changed my life, I never saw or met. Yet, he was truly the first copy of the BB I ever read. When my friend went to the phone and called him about information on the program, telling him about me, I don’t think he was really interested in meeting me. But, it worked for me. In truth the results were not up to him, anymore than they are up to me.
How many of us are aware of people we might have helped by something we said, or just our presence in a meeting? I know that I was helped by many people at meetings, whom I never even spoke to. It was just the fact that they were always there and how they comported themselves during the meeting. Some of them never even spoke. Now that’s probably what my sponsor and others probably meant, when they said, “You may be the only copy of the Big Book that someone gets to read”.
I was thinking about this today, hoping that I could be that copy for someone else.