One of the big disappointments for me in this program was that I found life not so easy. Here I was sober at last and, if anything, things were sometimes getting harder. I’m not talking so much about the program itself, but things in my personal life.
We had an old timer up here, who was suffering from cancer, who always smiled and said, “Life is just a bowl of cherries”. Easy for him to say. But, by that time, I was beginning to believe him. Today, I can better understand what he was saying.
However, for a long time, I underwent some pretty hard times. What I didn’t understand was that a lot of what I was “suffering” from was of my own making. Even though the program was working for me, in other areas of my life, I felt like I was being nickled and dimed to death. My relationships were difficult, my work life was miserable, and a whole lot more was not going well. Meetings became an escape into a temporary place of peace. I was developing that well known thinking rut that life in general was not fair.
What was wrong? How was I going to last in sobriety if things kept going the way they were? Then, when I was desperate enough I began to ask questions of my sponsor. Instead of whining, which I’m sure he was sick of by that time, I started to listen to what he was telling me. And, even though I hadn’t thought about a drink in a long time and I was sure I was making headway in the program itself, he pulled out he BB and pointed to a passage in the Fifth Chapter, the one that said that we had to rid of our old ideas or we would go nowhere.
What old ideas? I asked him. All you old ideas, he replied. But what about the good ones? You don’t have any good ones, he replied. Oh. But some of them must be good, I thought.
That started a long journey within, which still goes on today. How smart were our founders? They saw things of which I would never have conceived.
There were ideas which went back to the very beginning. Things which were going to have to dynamited out of place. No wonder my sponsor had told me that I had such a closed mind that it would be almost impossible to get it opened. My view of life itself was twisted around. I was going to have to get it turned around just to see straight.
I could go through a long list at this point, but it would not only be boring, but I no it would also be incomplete, since I’m still uncovering things. Besides I know we all have our own lists. I’ve also discovered from talking to others that much of it is all the same. Yet, try I must, if I want to stay sober.
One thing I remember from that conversation with my sponsor, something he would repeat from time to time, “Who said that life was fair or that it was going to be easy?” By the way, he would get this big grin when he would say this. And, I’m smiling as I write this. After all, I’m still sober and I have made a little headway in regard to uncovering and at least modifying some of those old ideas.