The More Glaring Personality Defects....

AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, having discussed the difficulties of doing inventories for the depressive and power-driven members and those in between, then proposes, "Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring personality defects all of us have in varying degrees." (page 48) These we can identify from our list of "serious violations of moral principles," "defects of character," or "an index of maladjustments." It approaches the list from the seven deadly sins. I've got plenty of them. Let's see...

• Pride - fascinating. It says, "Pride lures us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts." (page 49) That one needs comment, but I'm not sure what to say, just that it rings so terribly true, the impact as I read it is to knot my stomach. I sit here with an almost overwhelming impulse to open a new window and type those three letters the computer knows so well that lead to opening my favorite batch of online games. I just want to duck and run. So, what I need to do is to figure out which ways pride has perverted my instincts. 

1. I have needs I need people to meet, needs I know they're more than willing to meet, perhaps eager because their own meet mine, but because communicating that might indicate a need on my part (wonder why!) I don't communicate, and the other person stays in their private shell as I do so we won't bother the other.
2. I don't remember names well, not just the ordinary absent-mindedness, but at a more basic level. Because I may be embarrassed by letting people know I don't know who they are, I just don't visit, don't engage in any but the most banal small-talk. I miss out on knowing people.
3. My pride -- meaning my fear of making a mistake -- leads to my procrastination, and therefore becomes an embarrassment for not having done the things I could have, should have done. I've no reason to think I'm not competent to make the decisions and do the work, but they build up.

• Greed - Something happened at work today. I confronted a person who had not asked my permission to change a procedure, and she should have. I got madder than I normally get, an anger that happens less than five or six times a year at work. While I was right in the fact she owed me the courtesy of discussing it first, part of my response happened because she was taking a responsibility from me, relieving me of some of my work, but in the process taking some power -- though I would supervise her in exercising it and was not actually losing power. Still, I have to think greed was part of the reason for my anger.

• Lust - I'm sure this is present, but it's not one of the biggies for me.

• Anger - My anger this afternoon was overt. Most of the time mine is covert. When I put on a show of being angry, usually it really is a show. Yet the people I am trying to make a point to ignore me and the others around, who know me when I'm not putting on the act, quiver in their shoes. That doesn't mean I don't stay angry a lot of the time. I was told a long time ago I was passive aggressive, meaning I don't get mad, I get even. I think it's a pretty accurate description. 

• Gluttony - Duh. Well, yeah.

• Envy - Oh! The big green giant. Yep. All mine. All mine.

• Sloth - What's slothful about a house that needs cleaning, an office piled with stuff that embarrasses me even when I'm alone in it? Yep. This one, too.

"Fear, a soul-sickness in its own right" and "fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build." (page 49) What a masterful use of the English language. And what a grasp of the meaning of fear in the lives of those of us who feel so isolated, so alone, so different. It's good to have a kindred spirit writing these words. 

"Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend too heavily on them." (page 53) This one is me completely. I have long recognized I had a three-tiered universe of people. The tiny part at the top were those people I idolized, those I felt I could never measure up to. And as I look at who they were in the past, especially, in light of the clarifying lenses of time, I don't understand how they rated so highly. Second is those equal to me who equaled, well, me. It was a lonely layer. Then the vast majority of people I felt better than. 

Well, I set out to describe some of my more glaring defects. Looks like I've got a fertile garden of them, as numerous as the termites eating away at my life-building.