Blog entry for:

work myself into a stew of self-pity. but by replacing my self-pity with active, loving concern for others, i become the kind of person i can respect.
yes i am one of those who has a tendency to gossip, and that is on my defect list. not that gossip is something i like to do, it is just a remnant of the whole behavior that the reading seems to be talking about this morning -- building up myself by degrading others. the cure, being of service to others, would make very little sense to me, if i had not done more than a few lines of writing about my sixth step. the problem is the chronic low self-esteem that i denied i had when i walked into recovery. that low view of myself has yet to be totally removed, as i never seem to be the sort of person i would like to become. it goes straight to yet another defect of character of mine, i demand perfection from myself, and being the human i am, perfection is not a state that is achievable. so the cycle feeds itself, i fail, i feel bad, i do something to destroy someone else, i feel even worse, and i have to do something to make myself feel better, and on and on into a deadly spiral of self-pity and self-abuse.
the clue in the reading is how to break this cycle, of course i will never be perfect, PERIOD! nor will i ever come close to that ideal, so being of service of others can lift me out of the cycle of acting-out, feeling bad, and acting-out again. each time i act-out, i lower myself in my own eyes. each time i perform a selfless service, i raise myself in my own eyes. so exactly how can selfless service be selfless if my motive is to build my self-respect? an interesting question and one that opens a whole new can of worms about service and motives. i guess, if i just do the service, automatically and without thought, it could work. the thought i have is; is it ever truly selfless? and the only answer i can come up with is not really, that would take me to the state of sainthood, and for me, that is not a state i think i will aver arrive in. so i just have to be satisfies that if i do things for the right reason, like being of service to others, without expectations of reward or even acknowledgment, i am as selfless as i can get at this time. and if i am doing that i do deserve to have a little more respect for myself, after all i am no longer causing more damage. and for me, right here and right now that is enough, my time is much too precious these days to get bogged down in pondering the imponderable.

∞ DT ∞