Mr. SponsorPants

Shooters -- Quick shots from meetings: Healing entitlement and resentment around money

 

"... I started writing 'thank you' on all of the checks I wrote.  All the checks I was writing to make amends.  And then all the checks I wrote to pay my bills.  'Thank you for the terms to pay this off' or 'Thank you for providing me with electricity or ... I don't know, just... thank you.  'Thank you for extending me credit.'  Eventually -- not right away, but over time -- it really helped me see that the way I thought about my amends, or what I owed, or what I was paying for, was upside down in some subtle ways.  I was still struggling with feelings of entitlement and privilege and, well, plain old resentment. But writing 'thank you' ... it's so funny, how it all comes back to gratitude, and how that changes everything, isn't it."

 

a rude truth for all

 

 

 

(amen)

 

 

Sometimes I think about how much time I spent drinking

 

 

Sometimes I think about how much time I spent drinking,

stuck in the bar, stuck in the bottle; trapped in the infinity doomloop of self-obssession and chemically altered thoughts.

But I don't think of it as time wasted

(see what I did there?)

though it does occasionally take my breath away when I think about the sheer volume of hours days weeks years spent in sickness.

 

The AA literature suggests that we "do not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it."

Sometimes when people reference that bit of the lit they sound as though they are following (or issuing) an order.

But it's not.

Not regretting the past, nor wishing to shut the door on it, is not an order to follow -- it is a result.  Specifically the result of working the 12 Steps (and, not to put too fine a point on it, a particular result promised before you are "half way through" Step 9.)

 

For me, this result is also rooted in the beginning of the 12 Steps, and understanding the disease concept of alcoholism.

To express how I understand this with a metaphor:

Someone who spent the first 20 years of their life in a wheelchair may think wistfully about what it might have been like to grow up free from that confinement -- but they probably don't get angry with themselves for not having spent their childhood in ballet or track -- because it's not that they didn't do those things (and thus "wasted" that time/opportunity), it's that they couldn't do those things.

The same is true for me when I understand the disease concept of alcoholism, and when I take the first step in understanding how powerless I am over it.  It's not that I didn't do healthier, better things -- it's that at that time in my life I couldn't do them.

 

And finally,

I had to have been who I was to be who I am.

And if I like who I am now, then nothing that happened before is really worth regretting.

 

a shift in perspective

 

 

"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns,

or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses."

 -- Abraham Lincoln

 

In many ways gratitude is merely a shift in perspective.

And the part of me which mocks this concept when I reflect on it, or cynically deconstructs or arrogantly dismisses it may well be a ventriloquist dummy for my alcoholism's voice.

(Gratitude is to alcoholism what crosses are to vampires in classic horror films.  They flee in the face of it.)

 

5 Quotes on Gratitude

 

 

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

-- Albert Schweitzer

 

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

-- John Milton

 

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

-- Lionel Hampton

 

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

-- Melody Beattie

 

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

-- Denis Waitley

Shooters -- Quick shots from Meetings

 

I have come a long way... and I have a long way to go.

Ultimately though, when I consider who and how I used to be, when I think about how small my world was, how tiny my dreams, how twisted my thinking, how dark my heart... when I remember that every day for years all I could do was drink and use... hell, all I wanted to do was drink and use... it doesn't matter how far I've come or how far I have to go.  I'm different.  I'm new. I don't live or think that way anymore.  And I never have to again.  That is... I am... it's a miracle.  Well, it's my miracle anyway.  And I really want to keep it.

 

How Not To Be Grateful. (An instructional list by Mr. SponsorPants' alcoholism.)

 

Hi there!  It's Mr. SponsorPants' alcoholism here.  He's not paying any attention right now, absorbed in trying to help one of his little projects -- as if, right? -- so I thought I'd take this advantage and step up to the mic.

With all the nauseating focus on gratitude this month, I thought it would be most instructive if I offered a way to avoid it.  After all, if you're busy being grateful then you're not taking care of Number One, right?  And no one's going to take care of you if you don't right? (HP? Puh-lease.  I thought you were too old for fairy tales...)

So here, without fanfare, is my helpful little list entitled:

How Not To Be Grateful

1. Focus on the things you don't have.

2. Compare what you do have to what other people have.

3. Remember, you never know when you'll run out of something, so stop giving.

4. Time is the most precious commodity there is -- and tomorrow you could get run over by a truck! -- so don't spend it on anyone but yourself.

5. Watch lots of television about rich people behaving badly (and there are so many wonderful choices, too!).

6. Dwell on all the things that didn't work out the way you hoped, (but don't look past that point to when things might have worked out even better than you planned). 

7. Spend quality time comparing yourself to images in advertisements.  (This is especially good to do either right out of the shower or while sitting in traffic).

8.  Reflect on every time you've ever been rejected.  (Don't forget to include professional rejections as well as personal ones!).

9. Stop reading anything which might turn your attention to some sort of so called "Higher Power."

10. Avoid 12 Step Meetings at all costs.

 

There you go!  Just do that and it should keep you free of that ticky tacky treacle, "gratitude" which everyone goes on and on and on about this month.

No, no... don't thank me.

It's my pleasure.

 

Really.

regarding the world: some perspective towards gratitude

 

I've written before (here) about my problem with the "should" that so often lurks around the idea of Gratitude -- and yet, though there's a fair amount of shouldism inferred below, it's also undeniably true, and an important perspective for me to have.

 

 

Post #1000

 

 

 

 

And so we come to the 1000th post here at Mr. SponsorPants.

Some quite short -- no more than a brief thought with maybe an image -- others perhaps overlong for the blog format -- but with only a handful of missed days Mr. SponsorPants has been a surprising constant -- and comfort -- for me over the last few years.

 

Frankly, I've struggled terribly in my life with procrastination.  I do not think of myself as a particularly disciplined person.  (When I first encountered the line in the AA literature "We alcoholics are undisciplined... so we let God discipline us in the way we have just outlined..." I am quite sure I winced).

Has writing Mr. SP taught me discipline?  I think it would be closer to the truth to say it has shown me that I am much more disciplined than I give myself credit for.  There's plenty of evidence to suggest that an alcoholic's powers of self-assessment are not great, so it's no surprise that I was surprised at my sticking to it.  It was important to me to do that.

I take the service aspect of it seriously -- as I do the anonymity of it, too.  And, as with everything in my life directly informed by AA's commitment to service, it's been both easier and harder than I thought, and I have gotten things from it I could never have imagined -- not the least of which is a feeling of being a part of something much bigger than myself.  That knowledge was always there regarding AA, but the experience of hearing from people in recovery from all over the world has been a profound and humbling thing -- a part of the blogging experience that I really didn't think about when I started.

And as with anything to do with sponsorship in general, I have gotten so much more than I've given -- which of course is the great spiritual paradox of service:  Once you start sharing -- your heart, your time, your attention, your experience -- what comes back to you is always immeasurably greater than whatever you think you gave, however much that might be.

So with that I wanted to say thank you.  For the emails, the comments, the little blips on the TypePad Overview thingy that tells me someone, somewhere, clicked in for a bit.

Someday I'll make the time to pull some of this blog into a more organized and coherent format and maybe make a little book out of it.  You can self publish so easily now.  And if that impulse is fueled equally by a desire to continue to be of service and maybe some ego -- well, that certainly wouldn't be the first time such a heady mix was the gas in my car. 

Tomorrow will be, without fanfare, #1001.  I'll keep plugging away.  I'm too old an AA dog to say "...for another 1000 posts..."  One Day at a Time refers to blogging, too I think. 

Sometimes I sit down to write and I feel empty -- just nothing there -- so I wait.  And eventually something comes -- even if sometimes it is just one short sentiment.  I turn it over and put it down and figure that maybe someone somewhere needed to read just that thing just at that moment; so whatever it is it's the right thing to write, regardless of how inspired -- or "un" -- I may feel.  Ultimately it is my privilege to share in any way -- anywhere and in any fashion -- what was so freely given to me. 

There is a passage at the very end of 'Bill's Story' in The Big Book which never fails to choke me up:

"Most of us feel we need look no further for Utopia.  We have it with us right here and now.  Each day my friend's simple talk in our kitchen multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and good will to men."

My heart is full of gratitude at being part of that ever widening circle with all of you...

Love,

Mr. SponsorPants

how grateful I am

 

 

sometimes

I can write and write and write

about how grateful I am

for the life I have

and its quality -- in large part defined by my sobriety

and how AA has shaped my view of the world.

but nothing I write seems to ever truly capture

the depth of that gratitude.

 

if you are new to sobriety

hold on

one day at a time.

there are not the words

for the transformation you can experience.