Transcript

Exactly Alike · Sober Readings

Scott Hayes: Welcome back to Sober Readings, everyone. My name is Scott. Today is Tuesday. It's the twenty-ninth September. Today I'm going to be reading Daily Reflections, 24 Hours, and a third reading from the Grapevine of October of 2026. But 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. Today's reading from Daily Reflections Exactly Alike Frequent Contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives. That's in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous page eighty nine. A man came to the meeting drunk, interrupted the speakers, stood up and took off his shirt, staggered loudly back and forth for coffee, demanded to talk, and eventually called the group's secretary an unquotable name and walked out. I was glad he was there. Once again, I saw what I had been like, but I also saw what I still am and what I still could be. I don't have to be drunk to want to be the exception and the center of attention. I have often felt abused and responded abusively when I was simply being treated as a garden variety human being. The more the man tried to insist he was different, the more I realized that he and I were exactly alike. Today's reading from 24 hours a day. September 29, AA Thought for the Day. Having got this far, shall we pause and ask ourselves some searching questions? We need to check up on ourselves periodically. Just how good an AA am I? Am I attending meetings regularly? Am I doing my share to carry the load? When there is something to be done, do I volunteer? Do I speak at meetings when asked? No matter how nervous I am, do I accept each opportunity to do twelve step work as a challenge? Do I give freely of my time and money? Am I trying to spread AA wherever I go? Is my daily life a demonstration of AA principles? And the last question Am I a good AA? The meditation for the day. How do I get strength to be effective and to accept responsibility? By asking the higher power for the strength I need each day. It has been proved in countless lives that for every day I live, the necessary power shall be given me. I must face each challenge that comes to me during the day, sure that God will give me the strength to face it. For every task that is given me, there is also given me all the power necessary. The performance of that task. I do not need to hold back. And the prayer for the day. I pray that I may accept every task as a challenge. I know I cannot wholly fail if God is with me. And for today's final reading, let's go to the grapevine from October of twenty twenty six. This is the online digital version, that's why they're releasing it before October is even here. And this month's edition is called Loneliness, if you'll remember. And the story that I'm gonna read is called Step 10 to the Rescue. I walked with trepidation into our second business meeting of the year at one of my home groups, a speaker discussion topic meeting. I didn't want to be there. The man who had said there are no rules in AA was back again. I could tell he felt grumpy and argumentative by our verbal sparring as we waited for everyone to join. The informal nature of our business meetings did not have an agenda. Therefore, our meetings functioned more like a group conscience. During the meeting he spoke up. I have an issue I want to bring up, he said. The last two weeks we had a pitch format, where one person picks another to speak and so on. You can't share unless you get picked. I had some newcomers come up to me after the meeting and ask if we always did it that way. I said no. We need to make sure it doesn't happen again, or the meeting may fold. He went on to talk about a couple of meetings that disbanded, which he thought was because others were not free to share. He even said he wrote to GSO years ago and said not to do that style of meeting. His fear based request to stop the pitch format met with agreement from other group members. Apparently they didn't like it either, or maybe they were afraid of him. I voted against the measure, but not with emotional sobriety. I threw his words back in his face in the time allotted to members who disagreed with the vote. It didn't matter. We now had a rule. Leaving the meeting, I noticed my solar plexus felt like I had done fifty sit-ups. I realized that it was because I had really wanted to control the outcome. I had attempted to exercise my power and got nowhere. So, as we do in AA, I took the problem inside into my higher power. What does the program tell me? That pain is the touchstone of all spiritual development. If I think I'm having a problem with another person, I need to look at me, not them. I also remembered that the best way to deal with someone in the rooms or elsewhere is to practice love and tolerance through praying for them. Yuck. That's the last thing I wanted to do. Pray for him? Of course. Absolutely. I needed to do that. So I did. In the end, I didn't truly care which way the sharing went, as long as we kept to our primary purpose and practiced love and tolerance with each other. I can't control others. I can only control myself. I have work to do. God spoke during the meeting through the collective higher powers of each member present. It always amazes me how something that seems lousy and no good ends up being the best thing for my spiritual growth. And that was submitted by LC in Florida. And again, it was called Step Ten to the Rescue. And it's from the new edition of The Grapevine titled Loneliness, and it's from October of 2026, the digital version. And now for my take on today's readings. One of the things I continue to learn in sobriety is that letting go of control usually works out a lot better than trying to force my will. I can convince myself that I know how things should go. How other people should act, or what the outcome should be. But the more tightly I hold on to those expectations, the more frustrated and resentful I become when things don't go my way. Sobriety has taught me that I don't have to control everything. Sometimes my job is simply to do my part, let go of the outcome, and accept what comes next. I get to practice that every time I sit in an AA meeting. I might have an opinion about how the meeting should be run or what decision the group should make, but my opinion is just one voice in the room. The group conscience is bigger than what I want. When the group decides something differently than I would have, I have a choice. I can fight it, carry a resentment, and insist that my way was better, or I can accept it. That's one of the gifts of AA for me. It gives me a place to practice letting go of self-will in small ways so that hopefully I can do the same thing when the bigger things in life don't go my way. Acceptance doesn't mean I always have to like the outcome. It means I can stop fighting reality just because reality didn't ask for my permission. Thank you so much for listening to Sober Readings today. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I hope you heard something that you might carry through your day today to help you along. If you'd like to send me your thoughts and your comments on today's readings, you can scroll down to the show notes and look for that link for my email address. Or you can head on over to soberreadings.com and click on the page that says Be a Guest. If you enjoyed today's episode and you would like to leave a dollar in the virtual donation basket while you're at the website, just click on that support page, scroll down a little bit, and you'll see a button that says drop a dollar in the basket. So again, thank you so much for listening today. 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.