Taking the First Step

I've been a regular attender of Al Anon for 6 months now and have also been working the steps with a big book meeting right here at my church once a week. This whole thing has been a gift to me that I never would have seen coming, but it has been a very good thing in my life at a very good time in my life. I'm not sure what shows on the outside from all the good work I've been doing in Al Anon, but I've experienced many wonderful changes on the inside. I've been able to let go of some things that had been bothering me as well as a number of things I hadn't even realized were bothering me. Today, I am more honest, trusting, humble and at home in myself than I was just six months ago.

Living the 12 steps has required me to let go of doing some things the way I've always done them and to intentionally find a new and healthier way to live day by day. It has required me to examine my perceptions and let go of some assumptions about myself and others that I've held for a long time and that weren't helping me in life. Rationally, that seems like a very simple thing - to let go of what isn't helping you. But the tricky part is that sometimes I don't recognize an unhelpful pattern I'm holding on to. I'm just so darn familiar with the way I've always done things that my lifelong habits have become kind of comfortable. And I've carried many of my old perceptions around with me since I was very, very young, so the things I do that aren't working for me often just seem normal to me. Because my old habits are such a deep part of me, nothing will change until I take that first step of somehow seeing my life from outside the box of my own thinking and my own perceptions. I was pondering this in the car one day when I saw this billboard down in Bridgeport:



Here's a bad habit in all it's familiarity. "Hi there buddy - you know me - I'm the cigarette you smoke when you're caught in traffic. You light me up and I calm you down - we're partners you and me. We always travel together, right? We always help each other through the tough times." Whoever started this anti smoking campaign really understands that old habits can become like friends that you reach out to for comfort when things are stressful. And from the inside, that old habit really does seem like a good and reliable friend. From the outside anyone can see that your "friend" is giving you cancer or emphysema. But that's not how it feels from the inside.

The billboard then suggests that you need to 're-learn' frustration in a new way - without using that old habit to get yourself through it. And I thought - that pretty much sums it up. Living the 12 steps means re-learning how to react to life without relying on old habits and old assumptions, or just mindlessly repeating predictable knee-jerk reactions. It means opening yourself up to a new way of experiencing the world that may be quite different than the way you've always experienced it. The Zen Buddhists describe this as having beginner's mind. Jesus said it's like receiving the Kingdom as a little child.

In the old fable, it was a little child that cried out that the Emperor had no clothes. I feel like my life in the 12 steps is helping me to be more like that little child - more able to see and name what I really see instead of seeing only what I think I'm supposed to see. I believe it was Pablo Picasso who said, "It takes a long time to grow young."

It's hard for someone like me to admit that I don't have it all together all the time. But I've discovered that by taking that first step and allowing myself to recognize when something isn't working, I leave room for something or someone outside of my own busy head to give me true and helpful guidance toward deep peace.