Of all things, I was watching a baseball game on Sun. night and going back and forth and switching channels (a guy thing I guess), and caught a little bit of Nature on PBS. It was about dogs. They were showing a number of types of dogs and talking about how breeding had developed them in a particular way. They came to sheep dogs and the narrator described how their penchant was back to their ancestors the wolves, but over many years they had been so trained that their brains were “hard wired” to perform certain functions helpful to man.
I remember years ago, when an old friend of mine said to me that the alcoholic brain, mind, was hard wired to operate the way we do. I’ve often keyed this into Bill’s words “the idea we’re like other men has to be smashed”. I really believe that we don’t function like others. I think from early years, maybe genetically, but certainly after years of abusing ourselves with lots and lots of alcohol, we think and react like no other group of people. As Tom, my sponsor, was always fond of saying to me, we’re immature, insecure, and over sensitive.
So, I’m never surprised at anyone’s reaction to some things in this program. Which brings me back to the phrase about us being hard wired. We react so negatively to many things, which others would not. We tend to alarmed, when others wouldn’t. There’s a host of things, but mainly fear. I know from talking and listening to others how we are and have experienced it myself.
The answer to all of this is spiritual. And I think this spiritual answer began from the day we committed ourselves to give up the alcohol and whatever else and continues to this moment. A friend of mine and I were laughing today about where we were in this program. He has over 30 years and I’m closing in on 37. Yet neither one of us see anything more than we’re still changing. It reminded me that there is no such thing as a graduation day along the way.