It's the Little Things

I’m an avid talk radio listener and this past week one of the show hosts was opining over the growing trend of people always being late. As a recovered alcoholic/addict I feel it is part of my recovery to always (barring something beyond my control) be on time. When I tell someone I’m going to meet them at a certain time that is a commitment I have made. To be late is breaking that commitment. I broke enough commitments when I was active in my addiction and I have no desire to return to that way of life.

Many will read this and say it’s no big deal – that it’s just a little thing and will not affect one’s recovery either way. I beg to differ. I firmly believe that there is no little things when it comes to the 12 Steps’ design for living. I must practice the 12 Step principles in all my affairs. This includes being on time.

It also includes making my bed in the morning. Some would ask “why make your bed if you’re going to mess it up again at night? No one is going to see it”. I make my bed because I respect myself and I deserve to retire at night in a neatly made bed. For me, and I only speak for myself, it feels better going to sleep in a made up bed than a messy one. I also try to keep myself neat in appearance. Not that I don’t lounge around in track pants on my days off work, but when I’m out and about I wear clean regular pants and shirts. Now, I’m not walking around in a suit and tie all day. I wear T-shirts and jeans for the most part but they’re not the clothes I slept in. I suit up and show up as the old timers taught me.

I do my best not to swear up a storm. When I was active in my addiction I swore a lot. As a person in recovery I’m trying to lead a different type of life and therefore speak in a civil manner. I’m not perfect as the Big Book tells us, “it’s progress rather than perfection” and I swear here and there (especially when I’m driving) but I swear much less than I used to.

Other little things that I do are: let other drivers in when they signal to change lanes; return money if I’m given too much change; be polite to those I encounter be they friend, family, stranger or foe; respect my elders; respect myself; don’t take things personally (and the three other Agreements via don Miguel Ruiz); don’t let dishes pile up in my sink; etc.

The way I was living when active in my addiction didn’t happen all at once. The toxicity of that life snuck up on me one little thing at a time until the unlivable became livable, the noxious lifestyle became the norm. If I let the little things slip then eventually I may let my sobriety slip (SLIP: Sobriety Loses Its Priority) and I’ll return to a life of degradation.

Dave the Dude

How My Higher Power Expanded

When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous I was wary of the whole Higher Power thing. I’d spent a great deal of my drunken time (and some of my sober time) mocking and criticizing those who believed in God. I remember being at an open discussion meeting talking about Step Two. I was sharing how I couldn’t get past this whole God thing. One of the people at the meeting came up to me afterwards and said something I’ll never forget, “it’s came to believe, not believe right away”. Those words allowed me to realize I just had to be willing to open my mind to the fact that there might be some sort of Higher Power out there. I soon realized that alcohol and the other substances I had been using were man made yet they had become my Master – my Higher Power, if you will. If something so insignificant could cause me to give it all my money, be put above family, friends and work than there had to be something greater than that and therefore greater than myself.

My first Higher Power was Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. Not any individual person as we are all human and fallible. However, the Fellowship was made up of a group of positive people giving off positive energy which I could grasp on to. They wanted nothing from me but for me to get well. As I went through my Steps and started to concentrate on my Step 11 my higher power expanded into what Carl Jung (friend of AA) called the Collective Unconscious. I feel that we, humans, animals, plants, etc., are all connected in the universe. There is even scientific evidence of this. I also expanded my conscious contact with my Higher Power by getting into Toltec Spirituality by reading The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz and then several other books he and his son, of the same name, have written.

Just before I celebrated five years of sobriety my father passed away. I had been living with him for a couple years prior to recovery and then the whole time, once I joined AA. I respected my father, Mort, immensely. He was a man of integrity. Following the death of my dad whenever I came to a fork in the road, where I was unsure of the right thing to do, I would ask myself, “what would Mort do (WWMD)?” This helped me to pause and make, what I felt, was the right decision in trying to practice the principles of AA in all my affairs. I began asking what WWMD more often and often. So much so that I feel that the spirit of my father has become an integral part of my ever changing Higher Power and my conscious contact with it.

Dave the Dude

Karma - what comes around goes around!

Since I got sober I’ve been pretty good at maintaining my serenity with a few exceptions. The biggest exception is when I’m driving. I still lose my patience and get irritated while driving. Be it a slow driver in the fast lane, people who don’t signal or general commuter chaos I try my best to stay calm but don’t always pull it off. I know it is progress rather than perfection but my progress in this area has been very slow. When the frustration takes ahold of me what usually happens is I start shouting and swearing. My window isn’t open or anything, I’m just shouting and swearing to myself but I lose it!

I was commuting home the other day when traffic came to a chaotic standstill. A police vehicle was blocking traffic and not doing a very good job of directing it. Motorists were trying to get around the obstruction in various ways but there was no rhyme or reason to what they were doing. My frustration level blew a gasket and I began to swear up a storm inside my car. When I finally made my way through the intersection I saw that there had been a bad accident.

The next day I was commuting to work when I had to stop as the motorist in front of me was waiting for traffic to ease up so she could make a left-hand turn. It was one lane either way. The impatient part of me wanted to go onto the shoulder of the road to get around but the patient part of me won out and decided to wait until the motorist turned. As I sat there waiting I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a SUV quickly approaching. My first thought was, “Fuck! That guy ain’t going to stop”, my second thought was, “what should I do?” There was no time for a third thought for that was when the guy smashed into me. I estimate he was going around 90 km/hour (even though he told the cop he was going 60). My car spun around several times, I have no recollection if I hit the car in front of me, and ended ass end in a pole, facing the opposite direction of oncoming traffic. Needless to say I suffered some injuries (back, neck, stomach, and leg muscles) and have to do a few months of physio.

I’m a firm believer in karma. What comes around goes around. What I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out is whether or not my impatience over the traffic delays caused by the accident, I wasn’t involved in, set into motion some bad karma. Did that bad karma have something to do with my own accident the day after? I like to think it didn’t but am not so sure.

Dave the Dude