Confronting reality, I’m rereading Louise Penny’s novels, and I just finished A Trick of the Light. I found this one especially interesting as the plot addresses a basic question. “Can people change?” and weaves together information about the art world and AA and partially answers the question, “Can people change?”. At one point in the story, Gamarch notes that the older he got, the more he yearned for less and less, while others yearned for more. But another of the characters commented that before he joined AA, he thought AA was simply a crutch for stupid people. “Before I joined AA, I thought words like ‘sharing’ were laughable. A crutch for stupid people. But I was wrong. It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. In our AA meetings, we need to be completely and brutally honest. It’s very painful.”
“Why do it?” another character asked. “Because it’s freeing. No one can hurt us if we are willing to admit our flaws, our secrets. It’s very powerful…. Step Nine is perhaps the most difficult, the most fraught. It’s really the first time we reach out to others. Take responsibility for what we’ve done, and if it’s not done right…”
“First, we have to find ourselves. Somewhere along the way, we got lost. Ended up wandering around in a confusion of alcohol and drugs. Getting further and further away from who we really are. . . But some of us find our way back from the wilderness…Getting sloshed was only part of the problem. This is a disease of perceptions, of emotions. We get all screwy in how we see things and how we think. We call it stinking thinking, and that affects how we feel. And I can tell you, it’s very hard and very scary to change our perceptions.”
I can vouch for that. It is very hard to change our perceptions, but it is very important. It’s the way we find ourselves and we find home. It’s taken me years to let go of much of my defensiveness and to accept that one of the things that makes us fully human is learning to accept reality and adapt to change. It’s the reason I have stayed with the program. I am so grateful all of our family addicts have been willing to let go of many of their so-called rights in order to embrace sobriety.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time. Taking one moment at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.. Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to his will so I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.