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i can seek ways to help others overcome their challenges without injuring their dignity. okay, so everything went soooooo slow this morning that i will be later to work than i want to be, as i am just getting on the bus right now. what i want and what i get are not always the same thing and i can whine about it, which i just have, or i can accept it, which is the next thin i will do.
getting on topic, i know that i can be one of those difficult people. yes, i know it is hard to believe, mr spiritual guru guy with all this clean time, can actually be less than spiritual from time to time. when that happens, i am grateful no one kicks me to the curb and tells me to get the fVck out and stay out, at least not in my recent memory. no most of the people in my life forgive my transgressions and help me to move past them. the question then becomes, how can i do the same, to those one or one hundred difficult people in my life? oh yes, pray for them. since i have a slighttlyy different view off how this spiritual stuff works, that may not ever bee something i can do,, sincerely. that is the key -- sincerely! what i can and often do, is to look for what i can do to help them be les of a pain in my life, because after all this is all about me. most of the time all i can do is to see why i am finding them “difficult” and adjust my expectations. that is often the best course off action for me. once i start thinking i have a solution for what ails them, well then i get in all sorts of trouble. yes many time, what makes them difficult is they are acting out in a behavior that is very familiar to me, what others may call so-called old behavior. it ticks me off to see myself reflected through the behaviors of others and as i stay clean, i get to run across it even more. what do i say to someone who is acting like i want to act, but am constrained to not do so, thanks to the step process? that's nice BUT…
that is where the most important part of the seed for the exercise comes in: without injury! there is certainly part of me, who wants to be left alone and that part of me uses honesty, brutal and cutting, as a weapon to drive a wedge between me and those who are providing me the clues i need to live. i could say, that part of me wants me dead, but will settle for me using, but i am not one of those kind of guys. in fact, as an aside, i think that is one of the most idiotic things i ever heard in the rooms, and i strain not to roll my eyes, when ever i hear someone say it. the fact is, there is no part of me, that wants me dead, never has been and right here and right now, never will be. no what that part of me wants, is to use like it was 1999 again. that is it, and recovery is a foil for that part of me, today.
anyhow. all of that aside, it is difficult for me, to tell someone what i think is wrong with them, without coming off superior and all judgmental. my sponsees, on the other hand, i seem to be getting a clue on how to do that, but that is as the cliché a horse of a different color. what i am talking about is my friends and peers, in all aspects of my life. even harder, are the total strangers i encounter who are less than spiritual in their interactions with me, at least IMHO! those brief, but telling encounters are the gauge of how well i am walking this program and those are the ones that help me the most to see what i need to see. that oftentimes the most difficult person in my life is me, and i NEED to allow the process of recovery to work in my life. yes on that note i think i will wrap this up, as i have been all over the map. it is a good day to be clean and it is a great day to be kickin' it on this side of the dirt.

∞ DT ∞