arrogance

It’s been a long time since my last post; April I think it was. It’s not that I haven’t had the time to write. I have been writing a lot, almost daily in a journal. And now I know that it’s time for me to start writing and sharing more blog posts.

This past year has been very full.

I moved back to Canada the first week of December, 2022. Leaving my home, friends, loves of the last ten years has been so challenging. Costa Rica is indescribably beautiful in so many ways. But I knew that I needed to continue with the next part of my journey back in Ontario. Moving back in December might not have been the easiest month to move back: I had to crawl out a window on the house on Christmas morning because both doors were completely blocked half way up by snow. I survived.

I started working a full-time job, in my brother’s company. It’s the first time since 1996 that I’ve worked full-time for someone else. The ol’ nine to five, though in my case it’s 7 to 3:30, with a pay cheque every Thursday. I’ve worked for myself and on contract jobs for so many years, doing so many things that it was very strange to have a job where I could go in, do my work and leave it completely until the next morning. But this has also given me the opportunity to do so many other things on evenings and weekend.

I was blessed to be able to spend a lot of quality, though somewhat challenging time with my mother during the last ten months of her life. In 2020 some severe medical issues forced her to completely give up her independence and move into a nursing home. While I was a long way away in Costa Rica, her plight was present to me, but certainly not in the way that I could appreciate how challenging this had been for her. She went from living in her own garden apartment where she moved easily between friends and activities, driving her own car, going to meetings, dances and casinos with friends, to being unable to do so many of the basic things in life. She could no longer walk nor stand. Her life was restricted to a very nice, but small room at the home, dependent on the staff for transfers from the bed to the commode, the tub to her wheelchair. It was a bitter pill to swallow. Hard for me to see; I can imagine but little what it was like for her. I’m grateful for the time I got to spend with her, two or three afternoons or evenings a week. When she passed at the end of September, she was more than ready to move on to whatever lies beyond.

The most important change in my life was getting more involved in AA. I’ve been sober since 2011. I worked the steps with a sponsor. I went to plenty of meetings. I always had a sponsor and I sponsored others. In Costa Rica I was involved in my local AA and I worked on the committee for our yearly convention. But for probably a year before I moved back to Canada, I noticed that things in my life were not as ‘happy, joyous and free’ as they had been. Back north, I started going to a lot of meetings, seeing many old friends in the program. And the thought came to me that perhaps I could use a refresher course through the steps again myself.

That has become the understatement of my year!

I asked a young man with just over a year of continuous sobriety to sponsor me and take me through the steps. I actually thought I would be doing this young man a favour by giving him the opportunity to sponsor me. I was completely unable to see the arrogance in my thinking.

This young man has taken me through the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in a way I never knew existed. We would read paragraphs that I know I’ve read many before but would have to admit I really never ‘heard’ until that moment. Many times during our discussions, he would point out ideas and concepts that were completely foreign to me: me, the veteran AA member! I learned quickly that I needed to open my mind. The ‘Set Aside Prayer’ he asked me to write in the inside cover of my Big Book and which we prayed every time we met, was working in a way I could never have predicted. I was letting go of old ideas about what I thought I knew about the AA program and myself and was seeing greater truths.

I had no idea how much I needed what this young man has. And I’ve made sure he knows how grateful I am for the experience of continuing to work with him. The AA program I am following today is very different from the one I returned to Canada with. Not for lack of effort. I had a good man as a sponsor in Costa Rica. But I know I needed to come here to get the renewal in the program I needed. I can now see how close I was to taking another first drink.

With renewed guidance, I am working the AA program. I have a home group that knows I’m a member. I have group and now district responsibilities. I am privileged to be taking other members through the Big Book as my sponsor is taking me. And, most importantly, I have made a deeper connection to that Higher Power that I can now see has guided me to where I am today in my recovery. And for all of this, I am truly grateful.

I had no idea whatsoever what was ahead of me when my brother and sister-in-law picked me up at the airport that December evening. It’s been a year of great changes and challenges. And I have no idea what the next year might bring: I await with eagerness what lies ahead.

I have a friend in recovery who, when he talks about the root of his problems and difficulties in life, says he can always trace them back to one of the three E’s: Ego, Envy and Entitlement. Whether it’s a problem with a coworker, or partner, how he’s feeling about a situation, or even how he’s been thinking about himself, he can always find one of the three as a key source to his approach to the situation.

Ego say that this is mine and you can’t have it. Envy says that what you have really should be mine. Entitlement tells me that it’s mine and I deserve it. Of course we can boil all three down to just the one: Ego; it’s all about me. What you have should be mine and you can’t have what I’ve got.

In an of itself Ego isn’t good or bad. It’s a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance. I can have an inflated sense of self, thinking I am better than another or I can have an inferior sense of who I am When combined with the disease of addiction, or as I often hear it said, the desease of ‘more’, my sense of self is so great that everyone else is beneath me or I think the opposite where I feel I am as worthless as whale dung on the ocean floor. Like so much else in life, it’s hard to find the balance between the extremes.

I can often find myself with the desire for what others have. I think that’s normal. It can help to motive me to change and move so that I too may share in what another has. But envy has no such desire to change. I want what you have, and I feel I’m entitled to have it. I don’t want to work for it, you should give it to me. Or, I have something and you can’t have it. As with ego, it can be inverted too where I have the feeling that I don’t deserve anything, and am worthy of nothing.

In recovery, like many other things, the trick is to find that elusive balance between the extremes. When it’s in balance, I have a sense of humility; the acceptance of who, where and what I am at this present moment. Balance is difficult to achieve. A mote of envy or a pinch of entitlement on either side can tip that balance one way or the other and start the slide down the scale and away from balance. I used to be blatantly unaware of the three E’s in my life.

Today I usually recognize when I am envious, arrogant or ego driven while I am in it, or shortly after the fact, and I can do something about it. Keeping the balance between need and desire is not easy because the river of life is full of turns and current and rapids that constantly test my sense of balance and threaten to tip me into the water. Staying in the moment helps me to deal with that which is at hand and keep myself afloat. With practice, finding the balance does get easier.

I am grateful.