My sponsor was so right in his assessment of me. He told me that I was educated beyond my intelligence. I can’t help but agree with that. I have more toys in my attic to play with than I can use in a lifetime. And none of them will help keep me sober. Quite the opposite. He also said, because of that, I was a slow learner. He also said that it would take dynamite to open my mind. Also that it took a two by four to get my attention.
Was he being too hard on me? I don’t think so. Like I said, I believe he was right on target.
Why am I going over all this stuff from the past? It’s because it’s still true today. I may have been restored to sanity, as far as alcohol goes, but there are problems, which still remain. One of them is how slow I have been to learn, because of all the faults of mine he listed.
Today, as I sat in the meeting, we were talking about acceptance. What was said in the group was really nothing new. Nothing that I hadn’t heard before. But what was clear was that I still have to learn how to apply these things to my own life. I may know a lot, but that doesn’t mean that I know how to do it.
But what has happened over the years that I have been sober is that I have learned to accept the fact that I work this program so imperfectly. I also accept the fact that however imperfect I may be that this program still works. It works in spite of me. It works because a higher power, my higher power, has empowered me to live this sober life.
In a way, that’s difficult for me to accept.
One of my character defects is perfectionism. In other words, if I can’t do something perfectly, why do it at all. Just quit. Otherwise I feel I have to carry the guilt of not being able to do it “right”. Yet, as I sat there today, I once again had to learn how to accept myself as I am at this moment, and to hope that some day I might be able to do better.
I know that what I am telling myself may be slightly nutty, but that’s just me. Maybe I’m not so isolated in this, as I think. Listening to two friends today, I got more than a hint of that. Oh, yeah, the second subject today was hope. And it’s hope that keeps me going. Hope that keeps growing into faith as time goes on, when I see others, like myself, imperfect, staying sober. When I see and hear their struggles with acceptance. See. There is hope for me.
Anyway, I was thinking about this today.