A couple of us were talking about character defects today. We were talking mostly about anger, but really about all of them.
As we talked, I was reminded about the author C. S. Lewis. In one of his essays he wrote about nice people. He basically said that there were two kinds of people; nice people and not so nice people. The nice people he was talking about seemed to be nice naturally. They seemed to have been born that way. They were generous, kind, and loving. They had humility and an undying faith.
The not so nice people were just the opposite. They were trouble makers. They were filled with angst and inappropriate behavior. They seemed to suffer from all kinds of character defects. Just reading about them reminded me of alcoholics. For these not so nice people, the task of being nice was difficult. They had to really work to overcome their defects.
That essay really caught my attention, because, as I said, it reminded me of the alcoholic in recovery. He said that there wasn’t much merit in the naturally nice people, because they hadn’t earned the way they were. On the other hand, he said, the not so nice had to pay a price for becoming a better person. And that’s the point.
All of us, who come into this program, have, like the BB said, been like tornados roaring through the lives of others. We have left a lot of wreckage in our wake. And we, through the practice of the 12 steps, have had to go back, clean house, make amends, and arrive at a spiritual solution to what troubles us most. All this in order to stay sober.
The result is that we begin to lead better lives. Our personalities are changed
and we begin to act differently and live differently. We start to treat others with kindness and charity. We become helpful to others less fortunate than ourselves. We start to become nice people.
But none of this was easy for us. We had to surrender unconditionally, not just to our being powerless over alcohol, but over most everything in our lives. We had to turn our whole life direction in reverse and take another path in our lives. Once the alcohol was out of the way, through the grace of our higher power, we had to start to deal with those things, which were a big part of our drinking life. Things which were underway a long time before most of us ever picked up a drink. Our character defects.
But I was also thinking about something else. How we can come to a point of peace and serenity in this life and then end up drunk again. How easy it is to sit back and rest comfortably in this new way of life, only to begin to slip back into our old ways unconciously and unaware of what is happening. I know for myself that I have to be vigilant, aware, that my character defects are there always. Like the alcohol, I am not cured. I have but a daily reprieve.
I was thinking about the spiritual solution and the need to maintain this daily. It’s in the 12 Steps.