Seems to be my week for being in the "chair." In the olden days before. Giving up the booze, being in the chair meant it was my turn to buy a round of drinks. I guess if I were to go out these days in company, being in the chair usually means buying tea, coffee and soft drinks, usually water. What a change from just a very few years ago. I don’t drink on a daily basis.
I mentioned doing a chair at Eaton Sq yesterday. Just experience strength and hope, a normal uncomplicated chair. Sharing the message of life I realise its not so bad this week. That is its not as bad as it can get. While I may be able to turn up to meetings, the actual physical limitations I have and the discomfort make me realise I am pushing on the edge of my boundaries.
As a consequence of the Eaton sq chair I was invited to go to the Hop garden just off St Martin’s Lane and near to Trafalgar Sq. a chair all about step ten in our AA programme.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.’
I am glad I was asked and still as anyone in the fellowship knows, we say yes to doing chairs and then feel the ‘oh no’ for agreeing to put ourselves in the spotlight. I don’t know if I enjoy the spotlight or ever had. Some parts of me prefer a low profile and still here I am on the internet.
Exemplars are always going to be criticised and then we need to know why. Most often it is because people are uncertain we have a right to be saying anything when they feel they want to have their say. I blocked someone from my you tube space because they were on their mission and on their podium on my space. As their message remains confused to me I don’t feel I need their brand of ‘truth’ shared as if I accept or agree with it. Indeed I am sure I really don’t know their message, so until they can confirm their purpose the block remains. I hesitate to block anyone, and its always a tough decision. At least I know my motives are to share experience strength and hope and however a person finds themselves and finds their sober living is not for me to criticise. I need not be host however to contentious view or vexatious views. Regardless of their progress and not being perfect, saying it does not then licence the vexatious one to suggest their brand of recovery need be shared on my space on the web, they can utilise their space with their words.
This all happened this morning before my journey to the Hop Gardens. Do I need worry about blocking a person on my space? No, at the same time I wish them well with their life journey, I need join theirs, I have my own.
A lovely room and venue. I shared and chaired, I realise as time goes by I speak for me and not for AA. And rightly so. With decades of more wisdom in the room, I chair and share to where I am in recovery and what it means to keep a weather eye on my progress. It seemed to go well, it seemed I got the missing ingredients to successful step ten work from shares back to me.
The gift of doing chairs is when we get over our worries at what we may say and the impact, we learn to listen to what others knows and have learned by the day for years and years. Now I realise these opportunities are for me to just kick off a meeting and discussion, I am happy to learn and listen and listen some more. The gift to hear others and their truth helps me understand how I am doing and also just to learn fills me with gratitude.
January 11th 2007
Bullies and Mean People
Wherever we go in life we will find people who have been damaged by their upbringing and their personal circumstances. I have met my fair share over the years and will continue to meet them as life offers. Its not their fault actually, to be a bully or mean spirited person, it is their whole life experience and their pain. I need not join in with their outlook.
Recovery is about recovering our lives and senses
And you know I suppose the hardest thing we have to do is deal with those things we don’t like most, the horrible behaviour of others to others and ourselves. Sometimes people do strike and lash out because they don’t feel valued or they don’t get their way. If a person is feeling like they have no value, they may need help and some sort of sponsorship like our fellowship offers. And when a person is in pain, because they cannot impose their will on others, well it just is too bad I guess.
How to respond?
I have often wondered how to do this. Actually what bullies need is cooperation in their game. Playing into the hands of bullies is easy. Don’t say anything and keep trying to appease them.
Take Action in our Fellowship is the key
When we find ourselves being undermined, we might feel shame or guilt, as this is what the bully feels. Shamed and guilty, so they try make the world fit their perception. A sad reflection especially when its people in our fellowship who do these mean things.
Fortunately
These days I don’t need to suffer or challenge bullies myself. Bullies feel they can do what they like. Bullies don’t realise the consequences when they feel powerful in their own head, and other people realise what they are doing.
Share the Problem
As soon as I realised what was going on, that someone was trying to bully me, through their sneaky behaviour, I realised the game of cooperation was up. And what has the Bully done, they have tried to belittle me on the internet, and give me qualities and perceptions that they the bully fear themselves. They fear people knowing their whole life story and would expunge it, they play self pity as their chances are dulled by what they feel people know about them.
Share the Problem
I am sharing what is happening as I may, because that is the only way. If I try and make the bully be nice, I am wasting my time, the bully is hurt and wants to hurt me, because I refuse to support their bad behaviour to me now, and to others in the past. I will not comply with the Bully, he can get on with his bully behaviour as he chooses. I will just share openly and honestly all round my fellowship what they are attempting to do, and share also where the evidence is, so people can make their own minds up.
Bullies
Are not nice people. So don’t bother to try reason with them. Bullies are hurt and full of pride and ego. They feel powerful and get their kicks from controlling others they feel are weaker than them.
Bullies
Look and sound reasonable until we often get to know them better. And their self hatred is what makes them who they are today. I need not name the bully here, for indeed everyone knows them in my community. And that is enough for now.
I will keep sharing the bully behaviour as it manifests so everyone can make up their mind about whether to be in their company, or not. Bullies need to be given the opportunity to get well. And actually it is not my job either to challenge their behaviour directly or with threats. As this bully knows from past experience where violence took them, I sort of hoped they were past that time.
Rehabilitation of Bullies
Is entirely possible, and not my job.
My Job
Is to live my life and be myself. Stick with my values and principles and let the world take care of the problem. Mean people get nothing out of life except mean glory, and mean rewards which help their ego keep them going because their esteem is rock bottom. My job in life is to make my life work as it may, with what is left of me. Its not my job to prop up wasters and bullies who cannot make their life work. That is their job, to make their life work and not sponge off me by association or by my work. In this instance it is a shame because there was light, and then they snapped back into their dark ways. My job is to be aware of them, share what they do when needed with the right authorities, and I have. And so and get on with life with people I care for and my life.
Bullies I have never cared for them, ever. And fortunately I don’t need or have to. Let go of them and make sure authorities know what they do so I have.
Sharing my story tonight
Well it seems some people are aware of who this bully is, and they say that this is their typical behaviour and actually the bully has repeated this pattern over and over. So I am not special, I am just the latest to get the bully treatment.
I shared my part in this tonight. And like the man I listened to before Christmas, about the Twin tower bombers, you could see why they did what they did, and actually, the well people and recovering people in AA see the same behaviour in the Bully they know and I know. Life has given them the seed of their behaviour and this bully make it worse. We can accommodate our understanding why and not condone their behaviour. For this Bully, his last victim was a female who had done nothing to him. And actually he has done this before with another girlfriend. Sick minds produce sick times for themselves and everyone knows this. Even the bully who does it..
Forgiveness
Yes there can be forgiveness, and there are consequences too, as people know and realise this bully and what he is doing. Sad and very sad overall.
For me?
Another lesson why I don’t wish for their company. As if it mattered to me what they do? If they were accurate I guess there would be shame, actually their behaviour is the shame they have and live with. I need not act upon their behaviour, their behaviour belies their true spirit, mean and nasty, the product of self hate and loathing. I would wish them well, their sickness makes their life intolerable and so they look to blame others. The Fantasy of their self importance and their life. It could not be smaller if they had wished it so. Sad…
Overall
An excellent day of sharing and living life in sobriety. Spiritual truly is all that life involves the good the bad and the ugly, so we know the difference.
Serenity indeed is there when we understand life on life’s terms.
January 11th 2006
How Things Used To Be
If opportunity does not knock, go out and build a door!
Seems we all have a golden age we might revere. We look back with hindsight and let our memories and imaginations play a part of our lives over again.
We all find those magic moments when the world might have been a happier place. We sense and capture a frission, a thrill and hold it dear to our inner being, our heart.
And today in its harsh glare, cold light, wake up moment, the reality appears stark. Or is it our attitude? Hard to say, for when we jump out of bed and feel the joy of a new day...
So maybe its attitude. We look at our world and see it with potential and possibility or negatively entrapped, or a mixture against a range of our daily activity.
Is the world going to the dogs, or is the world becoming more interesting and opportunistic. It is a lot to do with attitude.
We know from experience what works and does not. And we sometimes feel trapped and unable to change the negatives. We know there are ways to build our positivity, and we know if we are gifted, our ability to change our lives.
As if addicted we can keep doing the same things over and over. And when they are happy things to do we are satisfied. Yet doing the same thing over and over and feeling bad about our lot is often our outlook.
And changing our world and moving ourselves forward, we prefer to stick with what we know, than know something different.
Hard habits are not easily broken. And our culture of blame comes to our rescue more often than we might acknowledge, keeping us locked in old ways we would wish to let go.
Debate is raging across many countries about our youth and their unruly behaviour. We see many measures to put people down rather than change their outlook.
And when I look back to old golden ages, where there were less people, less opportunity and less open societies, I wonder if there were any golden, golden age.
Surely we might do better to acknowledge our developments and build as we can and include all our resource, as best we can muster.
Every age is golden, every moment we are changing and every day we are learning.
Simply we have more people, more problems, more solutions and more energy. We see more of the world and what works and what fails.
There is no end to our world and its progress, moving on at a pace as big as ourselves. We need find our niche where we feel most at home, and home will keep changing all long as there's man.
January 11th 2005
Disquiet
As if to take away the peace or tranquillity of this day. Any remnants of past can bring turbulence into the quiet of our reflection, and this day. I am reminded often of the hurt experienced when a nightmare strikes home some fear and complication which I felt long gone.
Then an incident, something I see, I am captured and trapped, engulfed in a fire of anger and anxiety. Nothing can touch those feelings of rage and bitterness. No amount of examination pulls me from the fire and bellicose notions...
I will favour and be inclined to start quarrels or wars, I will, my will. Not good for a sensitive being who wishes for peace and tolerance. A part of me lingers in a fire of untold fury. Then in the writing of these words I am gifted with patience and recognise my will and my desire will heap great volumes of hurt upon my inner being. I must let go of fury and revenge, let go those damaging images from a hell, a part of my life, which churns as a
reminder of what I stand for. Humanity, that gift of knowing, so complicates, that in essence we are all culpable and able. We can turn to good or bad, with such compelling argument inside us. We can become that which we hold in contempt in our prosecution of fundamental rights...
The wounded soul, so hurt by twisted nature, is lost if left to drift. We must attend to nightmare's as we to our happiness, so inextricably linked to our freedom. Shared reflection dismantles inner torture and free the mind for forgiveness.
We all need counsel, we all need the touch of humanity, we should seek it where trust lies.
Trusting ourselves to trust others, is never mistaken over a lifetime. Wisdom's touch is acceptance...