Blog entry for:

... my answers have nothing to do with the questions i am being asked. learning how to listen -- really listen -- is a difficult task, but it is one that is not beyond my reach.
one of things that drives me nuts, is when someone is not listening to what i am saying. it happens often enough that there are days i wonder why bother, after all, their minds are so made up, rightly or wrongly, that they are incapable of hearing much less understanding what i am trying to say.
when i get in situations like that, i have to stop and listen to what is really going on. the reason i get my knickers in such a bunch, is because, i am just as apt to tune out those who are saying things i do not want to hear.
oh yeah, it would be wonderful to say that i listen to every single word that is being said to me, that i take each and every concept and roll it around in my head before i decide whether or not to in corporate it into my world view, nut i have yet to, and probably never will, come close to this ideal by any measure. so if that is the case, why bother. and if i cannot achieve this ideal, what about the rest of the values and principles i purport to live my life by? i honestly can say that i will probably never will be able to live up to those ideals, so i might as well quit while the quitting is good. and while i am at it, why not use?
nobody ever told me recovery was going to be easy, nor that i was entitled to expect the members who were here to make it any easier for me. what i was told, was that IF i did what they did, i would get what they got, FREEDOM FROM ACTIVE ADDICTION, and the rest was all bonus. IF i did my human best to live and practice these simple spiritual concepts. i MIGHT get better, but i WOULD STAY CLEAN, and in the long run become a different sort of person than the man who walked into the rooms. and that has all come to pass. it is the HOPE that process will continue, that keeps me coming back, and doing my best to practice and live these principles in my life, even when i do so less than perfectly. so my task for today, is to allow myself to actually listen to what is being said top me, and forgive those who do not listen to me, after all, i am in that same boat.

∞ DT ∞