As with most words I have been using most of my life, I rarely stop to think about them or take time to look up their meanings. Today, glancing through the chapter We Agnostics, I came across “vicissitude”. There’s a mouthful.
Bill was talking about a man, who had rejected the idea of God. He said, when the man had finally found his own concept, that no later vicissitude had shaken his faith. Meaning that it was not subject to a change in his conviction. I did go back and look the word up.
That, of course, was not what had originally interested me. My thoughts were more basic. I went back to the chapter on agnostics because it is all about an open mind.
The reason I go back to this subject is because I’ve always had a problem with this. My mind can close in a flash on any given subject. Yet I know that an open mind is an important asset to my sobriety. My convictions, when I entered into sobriety, were so set in stone that my sponsor almost despaired that there was any hope for me. I had so many old ideas that I had to let go of that my vision of AA and all it offered me was very limited. And, although I was eventually able to pry my mind open enough, with my sponsor’s help, to begin to grasp this program, I still am discovering and struggling with letting loose many of these ideas I had acquired over a lifetime.
Many of these ideas go right to the heart of my many defects. The idea that I know better is one of these. It is at the foundation of the first and foremost defect Bill talks about: Pride. Where I got that I don’t know. I’m sure it is something that goes back past memory. But it’s there. It is the seed of self righteousness and so many others that feed into this pride and egoism. I’m also sure that it was at the root of my alcoholic insanity.
I also know that I’m not unique. I have shared and others have shared the same thoughts with me. But it is one of those things I have to be aware of, because of the sure and certain knowledge that my freedom from the bondage of alcohol is dependent on the freedom from the bondage of self.
Ego deflation in depth. The discipline of surrender. The need for humility.
Anyway, I was thinking about this today and raising my awareness of what it is I need to do to stay sober this day. Not to take myself so damn seriously, but to take my sobriety seriously.