Latest / Sober Readings / Serenity After The Storm
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome back to Sober Readings, everyone. Thanks for joining me today. My name is Scott. Today is Saturday, the 3rd of October. Today we're gonna read from Daily Reflections 24 hours a day. And the third reading today is gonna come from Living Sober. Let's get started today with the Serenity Prayer. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. From daily reflections, Serenity after the storm. Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress. How heartily we AAs can agree with him. That's on pages ninety three and ninety four of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. When on the roller coaster of emotional turmoil, I remember that growth is often painful. My evolution in the AA program has taught me that I must experience the inner change, however painful, that eventually guides me from selfishness to selflessness. If I am to have serenity, I must step my way past emotional turmoil and its subsequent hangover and be grateful for continuing spiritual progress. Today's reading from twenty four hours a day. October three, AA Thought for the Day. How do I talk with new prospects? Am I always trying to dominate the conversation? Do I lay down the law and tell prospects what they have to do? Do I judge them privately and feel that they have small chance of making the program? Do I belittle them to myself? Or am I willing to bare my soul so as to get them talking about themselves? And then am I willing to be a good listener, not interrupting? but hearing them out to the end. Do I feel deeply that they are my brothers or my sisters? And the question for today is will I do all I can to help them along the path to sobriety? The meditation for the day. The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness shall be quietness and assurance forever. Only when the soul attains this calm can there be true spiritual work done, and mind and soul and body be strong to conquer and bear all things. Peace is the result of righteousness. There is no peace in wrongdoing, but if we live the way God wants us to live, quietness and assurance follow. Assurance is that calmness born of a deep certainty of God's strength available to us and in his power to love and guard us from all harm and wrongdoing. Today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may attain a state of true calmness. I pray that I may live in quietness and peace. And as I stated, for today's final reading, let's go to Living Sober. And this is chapter 5. It's called Live and Let Live, and it's on page 10. The old saying, live and let live, seems so commonplace. It is easy to overlook its value. Of course, one reason it has been said over and over for years is that it has proved beneficial in so many ways. We AAs make some special uses of it to help us not drink. It particularly helps us cope with people who get on our nerves. Reviewing once more a little of our drinking histories is Many of us can see how very, very often our drinking problem appeared to be related somehow to other people. Experimenting with beer or wine in our teenage years seemed natural, since so many others were doing it, and we wanted their approval. Then came weddings and bar mitzvahs and christenings and holidays and football games and cocktail parties and business lunches. And the list goes on and on. In all these circumstances, we drank at least partly because everybody else was drinking and seemed to expect us to. Those of us who began to drink alone or to sneak a drink now and then often did so to keep some other person or people from knowing how much or how often we drank. We rarely like to hear anybody else talk about our drinking. If they did, we frequently told them reasons for our drinking, as if we wanted to ward off criticism or complaints. Some of us found ourselves argumentative or even belligerent toward other people after drinking, yet others of us felt we really got along better with people after a drink or two, whether it was a social evening, a tense sale, or job interview, or even making love. Our drinking caused many of us to choose our friends according to how much they drank. We even changed friends when we felt we had outgrown their drinking styles. We preferred real drinkers. People who just took one or two, and we tried to avoid teetotalers. Many of us were guilty and angry about the way our family reacted to our drinking. Some of us lost jobs because a boss or a colleague at work objected to our drinking. We wished people would mind their own business and leave us alone. Often we felt angry and fearful even toward people who had not criticized us. Our guilt made us extra sensitive to those around us, and we nursed grudges. Sometimes we changed bars, changed jobs, or moved to new neighborhoods just to get away from certain peop persons. So a great number of people besides ourselves were in one way or another involved in our drinking to some degree. When we first stopped drinking, it was a great relief to find that the people we met in AA, recovered alcoholics, seemed to be quite different. They reacted to us, not with criticism and suspicion, but with understanding and concern. However, it is perfectly natural that we still encounter some people who get on our nerves, both within AA and outside it. We may find that our non-AA friends, coworkers, or family members still treat us as if we were drinking. It may take them a little while to believe that we have really stopped. After all, they may have seen us stop many times in the past, only to start again. To begin to put the concept of live and let live into practice We must face this fact. There are people in AA and everywhere else who sometimes say things we disagree with or do things we don't like. Learning to live with these differences is essential to our comfort. It is exactly in those cases that we have found it extremely helpful to say to ourselves, ⁓ well, live and let live. In fact, in AA, much emphasis is placed on learning how to tolerate other people's behavior. However offensive or dis distasteful it may seem to us, it is certainly not worth drinking about. Our own recovery is too important. Alcoholism can and does kill, we recall. We have learned it pays to make a very special effort to try to understand other people, especially anyone who rubs us the wrong way. For our recovery, it is more important to understand than to be understood. This is not very difficult if we bear in mind that the other AA members too are trying to understand just as we are. For that matter, we'll meet some people in AA or elsewhere who won't be exactly crazy about us either. So all of us try to respect the rights of others to act as though as they choose or must. We can then expect them to give us the same courtesy. In AA, they generally do. Usually, people who like each other in a neighborhood, a company, a club, or AA gravitate toward each other. When we spend time with people we like, we are less annoyed by those we don't particularly care for. As time goes on, we find that we are not afraid simply to walk away from people who irritate us, instead of meekly letting them get under our skin, or instead of trying to straighten them out just so they will suit us better. None of us can remember anyone's forcing us to drink alcohol. No one ever tied us down and poured booze down our throats. Just as no one physically compelled us to drink, now we try to make sure no one will mentally drive us to drink either. It is very easy to use other people's actions as an alibi for drinking. We used to be experts at it, but in sobriety we have learned a new technique. We never let ourselves get so resentful towards someone else that we allow that person to control our lives, especially to the extent of causing us to drink. We have found we have no desire to let any other person run or ruin our lives. An ancient sage said that none of us should criticize another until we have walked a mile in the other person's boots. This wise advice can give us greater compassion for our fellow human beings, and putting it into practice makes us feel much better than being hung over. Let live, yes, but some of us find just as much value in the first part of the slogan: live. When we have worked out ways to enjoy our own living fully. Then we're content to let other people live any way they want. If our own lives are interesting and productive, we really have no impulse or desire to find fault with others or worry about the way they act. Can you think right this minute of someone who really bothers you? If you can, try something. Postpone thinking about him or her and whatever it is about the person that riles you. You can boil inside about it later if you want to, but for right now Why not put it off while you read the next paragraph? Live, be concerned with your own living. In our opinion, staying sober opens up the way to life and happiness. It is worth sacrificing many a grudge or argument. Okay, so you didn't manage to keep your mind completely off that other person. Let's see whether the suggestion coming next will help. And the suggestion coming next is chapter six, and it's called Getting Active. And we will revisit that in an upcoming episode. And now for my take on today's readings. Let's go back to Daily Reflections, where it says the line, Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual progress. I've heard that line many times in recovery, but I think it's easy to miss what the word touchstone actually means. A touchstone was originally a stone used to test the purity of gold or silver. You would rub the metal against it and the market left behind helped reveal what the metal really was made of. So when I hear that pain is the touchstone of spiritual progress, I take it to mean that pain has a way of revealing what I'm really made of. It tests my faith, my acceptance, my willingness, and whether I'm actually practicing the principles I talk about when life is going really well. Looking back at my own life, I've actually chosen pain and suffering many times. I've run one hundred mile races where I knew going into them that at some point I was going to hurt, that there was gonna be suffering. There would be exhaustion, sore muscles, aching feet, blisters, darkness, doubt, and moments when every part of me wanted to stop. But I willingly put myself in those situations because there's something valuable f about finding out. That I can keep moving forward when things get hard. Those races have taught me that that pain doesn't always mean something is wrong, and discomfort doesn't mean I have to quit. Sometimes I just have to accept where I am, take care of what I can take care of, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. As David Goggin says, there's something on the other side of suffering. In a strange way, I think those 100-mile races help prepare me for the pain I don't choose. Because sooner or later life is going to hurt. There will be loss, disappointment, fear, loneliness, heartbreak, and things completely outside of my control. I can't train for exactly what life is going to throw at me, but I can practice walking through difficulty without running away from it. That's something sobriety has taught me too. I don't have to numb the pain, escape it, or drink over it. I can sit in it, lean on other people, and my higher power. And remind myself that this moment will eventually pass. Just like during a hundred miler, I may not be able to see the finish line from where I'm standing. Sometimes all I can do is take the next step, and sometimes that's enough. So that's all for today's episode of Sober Readings. Thank you all for listening. I hope something you heard today stays with you and helps you along your way. If you'd like to be a guest on Sober Readings and share your experience, strength, and hope, or just join me for a reading. There's a link in the show notes below to send me an email. You'll also find a link in the show notes to my website where you can learn more about sober readings and stay connected. Also, if you'd like to drop a dollar in the donation basket for today's readings, go to the support page on the website and click the button to drop a dollar in the basket. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to support Sober Readings, please subscribe to the podcast and give this episode a like. It really helps more people find my show. So thank you for spending a few minutes of your day with me today. Be good to yourselves and others, and remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day, everyone, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.