Perspective

A woman I'm sponsoring is sending me her gratitude list daily. It's helpful to put into perspective my day's activities and emotions -- and to remind me of my own gratitude sources. I just came back from a trip I found to be a real joy. Obviously, there were issues with the trip, more with this trip than with some, and my own negligence and trust-placing caused some of the surprises. Still, it was an awesome experience, an opportunity to observe the world's beauty and vastness, My travelling companion acknowledged the beauty, but dwelt on the inconveniences. What a loss!

 

Perspective is important in looking inward as well as outward.

• Yesterday I got a test copy of a product I put together. Most of it looks great. My mistakes, though, are what I think of first, but they'll be corrected -- that's why we went to the expense of getting a test copy anyway! And the final product will be glorious.
• I got a check yesterday made payable to an entity that has no bank account. But hey, I got a check, and the bank can expand the allowable names on the account, I bet!
• I left a small bowl of chili out last night, necessitating it's being added to the dogs' breakfast rather than a later meal. That was stupid. But I put the majority of the unused chili in the refrigerator appropriately. Yeah, the waste was still stupid. But the financial loss is not worth the emotional enmity.

I'm okay. I'm REALLY okay. Look how far I've come! A car in front of me this morning slowed down unexpectedly to enter the AM Donuts parking area. Two years, six months and a couple of weeks ago, that would have been my car. I no longer felt any need to go there, thought "My car doesn't make that turn anymore." I amended the thought, though -- there's a fruit vendor in the same lot. But I have no need for the donuts. Thank God! One of the glories of the trip was I reveled in creation, in people, in new experiences -- not in new dishes or in stuffing all the food I encountered into me. I ate no sugar, and I didn't eat more than I needed. Thank God!

This day in history

I remember a conversation with my younger son another June 6, sometime around 2004 or 2005. Of course historically, this is D-Day, the landing of Allied forces at Normandy. I was born a Baby Boomer, have no memory of WWII, and to be honest I remembered D-Day's date then because of its personal significance to me -- not the invasion, but my own D-Day. Anyway, we were discussing the historical one and he, born in 1980, said he bet half his generation didn't know the significance of June 6. I said half of MINE didn't know, and less than a tenth of his did. All the estimates are probably too high. 

Anyway, personally my June 6 was in 1997. It was the climactic event of what I lovingly call my "hell year" from October, 1996 to November, 1997. On that day I was so tense, so earnestly trying to hold my world together, I reached up rather casually and severed by rotator cuff with sheer tension. Because of that moment, circumstances made me realize I was killing myself and not managing to help anybody else either. And I began to try to figure out how to take care of myself. But for a while I continued to do it medicating with the food, though I also met an angel who massaged me with her hands and used her words to start waking me up to "the things I cannot change" and giving me the courage to change the things I can. It was a long trip. Through a psychologist, then finally another counselor steeped in the wisdom and traditions of these rooms, and together, through ten years, God used all the events to bring me to the morning of December 17 when I told him life as I was managing was "Stupid!" And it was. But under new management it's fantastic. Thank God!

Blast from the Past

Sometimes a regression is the easiest way to really see how far you've come. I had a trip to yesterday yesterday (the first yesterday being figurative, the second literal when I started this, "poetic" now.) I acted like I used to act. I don't know what the character defect is called. "Surrendering the self" might be appropriate but I've never seen it on a list of character defects. "Fear" works, too. How well "fear" works to describe my past....

A neighboring town had baseball-size hail; we were in the path of the general storm, had no idea how badly we'd be hit. (Short answer: not even much rain.) With excess cars over garage space, we took two cars to find shelter elsewhere. The story is long and involved, but basically I was in one car near my husband in the other, and I was faced with the question of whether to move for somebody else. My instinct was to move. But I fell back into the fear, into trying to imagine my husband's thoughts, and I did what I thought was rude because I expected it would be his choice. It wasn't. He thought I was rude, too. And I was. But my big issue (especially since there was no hail after all) was what it felt like to regress to the character defect of trying to please by abandoning myself, by surrendering my will to the wrong "higher power."

This program is a miracle.

I was working with quotations yesterday for a project, and two stand out:

• "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." Nelson Mandela
• the other was not in the list but was a conversation between my son and me when I copied that to him in the IM box:
• son: The converse to the statement is also revealing.
• me: yeah. Like going home and reverting?
  
• son: like going somewhere that has changed and that revealing how little change has happened in you.
  

Remorse

I read for the first time this morning Kahlil Gibran's addressing the issue "On Crime and Punishment." The phrase that grabbed me and sent me to find the rest was "And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?" It's a powerful piece of writing, one that makes me think from the perspective of the criminal justice system, but even more as a recovering compulsive overeater. It really doesn't matter whether we're thinking about the wrong people did us or the wrong we've done others. It says we're all equaled, all "sinners" and all "saints" or at least we're as high as the highest among us. Fascinating.

The perspective I see right now in reading this, the reason this draft has been sitting open on my computer for a while, is in looking at those who make my life uncomfortable. Through program I've come to see their behavior as the same as mine when I was struggling to like myself. The blame placed on me by the other is not my blame to adopt, as I was so quick to do for so many years. It's his or her own, and no matter what I do, I can't take away that blame, can't relieve him of it. Nor can I punish him for dumping it on me, for that only serves to give him another focus, to make his self-reproach something he can hide from himself in his anger at me.

I feel sorry for him, for I'm no longer playing the game, and I see his hurt, his misery. His remorse greater than his misdeeds -- and far greater than any punishment I could mete out.

God help us all.  

Strength or Power

It struck me today, trying to figure out what that last phrase of the 7th step prayer is and going back to look at it, that there's a significant change in shift between the 3rd step prayer and the 7th. I've been making a mistake in the 7th step prayer, praying for power. That's a REAL mistake. Now that I've spent the morning, or at least bits and pieces of it, thinking about power and strength, I realize they're far from the synonyms I would have told you they are. In fact, in program at least, they're polar opposites.

Power. We had power, or at least longed for power, when we were in the morass of disease and distress. I have an old disk (a reference disk for Microsoft Office Professional, (c) 1983-1996) that is a valuable possession of mine for the Microsoft Bookshelf '95 on it. I've sat here for a while reading all the quotations filed under "Power." Then I went to "Strength" and found the quotations for that -- or, rather, the lack of any quotations on strength. But the ones on power are as fascinating as the lack of quotations on strength. Among them:

• "A friend in power is a friend lost." (Henry B. Adams)
• "It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self. (Francis Bacon)
• "Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true." (Eric Hoffer)
• "To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile." (Simone Weil)
• "Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there." (Harold Macmillan)

But then there's:

• "The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away." (Aneurin Bevan)
• "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." (Thomas Jefferson)

In recovery, power is a god attribute, God being described as our Higher Power as we understand him. We do use power in the 3rd step prayer, but it's not our attribute, but God's: "Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life." In fact, what we're asking for in the 3rd step prayer is surrender of our power. "I offer." "Relieve me." "Take away." The only affirmative request is, "May I do Thy will always!"

Then to the 7th step prayer, after walking the path through 4, 5, and 6 -- a path that can at times feel like a gauntlet -- through the triumphal arch. "I am now willing." and "Grant me strength... to do Your bidding." It's not "grant me power."

Strength is defined as "the power to resist attack; impregnability," "the power to resist strain or stress; durability" and as "a source of power or force." Power, on the other hand, is defined as "strength or force exerted or capable of being exerted; might."

Like many similar words in English, one (power) comes through the Roman/French influence, "to be able." Strength came through the old English, celtic influence.

I guess I finally arrive at the conclusion that having power is okay, but seeking it is not. And having power, without seeking it, we're in the position Jefferson envisioned and Benjamin Disraeli described: "Power has only one duty -- to secure the social welfare of the People."

Ego

First, I had promised to lead my readers here on the blog know when I mastered the intricacies of uploading Slender Steps to Sanity as a Kindle book. I did. (I hope.) Since I'm writing here about ego, I'll say it was both a boost to the ego in finally figuring it out (with a little help from a computer guru I raised) and a reality-check in the work it took to get my stuff up and out there. And it led to a touch of humiliation and a healthy serving of humility when I found that the mention in the text book of "seremity" left me anything but serene. Sigh. Anyway, the Kindle book is now available.

While I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to send Amazon the encoded book I'd labored over, making the code look right and reflect the line breaks, etc., in the book, I had three chat boxes going at once. One was with a business partner getting account numbers and details I needed to set up the Kindle account, another was with my computer guru son, or more specifically with his wife until she got him to type for a while in her place, and the third with a "sponsored." (It's been a while since I said here I hate the word sponsoree.) Here's part of that conversation:

Sponsoree: I just sent that email back to you

  (and to me)

8:39 PM me: okay. one minute.

9 minutes

8:48 PM Sponsoree: my biggest revelation is that all my resentments stem from one thing - I feel entitled to be the center of the friggin' universe

8:49 PM me: Yeah. Wait a minute. Grinning. But not kidding much. ;)

8:51 PM Sponsoree: i'm still here for a bit. i'm going to read a few pages until  hubby turns the light out.

7 minutes

8:58 PM Sponsoree: ok. back

9:01 PM me: Okay. I got my fire put out too.

As I look at this, obviously I wasn't very honest. My one minute the first time took nine, the second time that same minute came up, it meant seven. And she and I were both busy being the "center of the friggin' universe" at the moment.

I talked yesterday with my therapist. She pulled out some facts in my life -- honors and achievements -- I hadn't talked to her about, and she tried to make me realize how special they are. No, I hadn't told her about them, for I'd been working with her to get to the core issues, and I didn't see the need to try to impress her. But I do understand how special they are, and when I'm insecure I find ways to work those kinds of facts into my conversation. Last night I was in a crowd of people (about 40) I didn't know. Well, one I've known for twenty years or so, and another I've been married to for several decades, but most of them I was meeting. And I don't remember names well and don't easily blend into an established group of people. When I dropped my most obvious impressive credential, though, the answer was, "We know." Well, yeah. It's kind of obvious, and the kind of thing people would know even just talking about him, as "his wife is...." But something about me needed to say it, needed to establish a foothold of credibility. Standing on my own two feet wasn't enough. 

It is with you, my OA family. I'm me. I'm on the same pedestal you're on -- well, at least the same podium. Pedestals are too lonely; podiums are raised and can be shared. I like that. I used to live in a tri-tiered universe. I was on a lonely pedestal with nobody near. Above me were those I hero-worshiped. Below me were the rest of the masses. Sometimes the populace above was multitudinous; sometimes that below. But my pedestal stayed lonely. Then I came home. I don't have to be the center of the universe, nor do I have to stand alone no matter what level. We're all equal, we're all God's kids, and we're all worthy, without having to impress anybody. We're loved.

Thank you for loving me.

Humble

Wow. That's absolutely the way I feel. My Slender Steps to Sanity is here, but I strongly feel it's not my book. Maybe "ours" meaning belonging to the whole fellowship, maybe God's. But its not mine.

I will be buying a number of copies at my author's discount and sending them to individuals I know in OA and to individuals connected with groups and intergroups I haven't met. I'd appreciate your help in doing this. I'm sending them as a gift. If you want to make some of them your gift as well, there's a link to the right where you can contribute to the printing and postage costs. If you know of OA's who should receive them,  you may email me their physical address. Thanks for being there, for giving me the message so I can carry it to others in this way and more. I'm so totally blessed. I love you all.