Blog entry for:

of my defects! sometimes, i just need to change, this morning i HAD to change my seed, because grammatically and syntactically it sucked. i do not take issue for the poor grammar and usage that litters the literature of my fellowship, but sometimes even i have to draw the line. semantically the seed is nearly the same, and the ideas expressed by the reading in and of itself, is undiminished by a poor choice of syntax to lead it off.
okay, my trip through the language police is over, i remind myself off one of my female peers, who was forever complaining about the usage and grammar of the literature, but was unwilling, and i mean SERIOUSLY unwilling to do anything about it, save whine and change the readings to suit her sensibilities. once upon a time, that was my gig as well. although i cannot speak to her motives, i can certainly speak to mine, and that will be a great segue into the whole notion of what i heard this morning.
for me, changing what i read, as i read it out loud, to suit my sensibilities, was a symptom of self-righteousness and arrogance. i KNEW better than the committee of addicts who wrote and edited the literature of my fellowship, and here was the opportunity to show it. it was not only my RIGHT, it was my duty to make , grammatical and semantic “corrections” to the literature, and i NEEDED to do it. replacing references to GOD, and removing all gender based pronouns, was just the tip of the iceberg, but the most obvious acts of literature reconstruction. at the time, i believed if i was offended by the word GOD and using a capitalized male pronoun, to refer to GOD, then someone else was as well, and i was doing my part to carry the message to the still suffering, although in those days the still suffering was anyone with less clean time than i had. not a whole of of selflessness in that acts. everything was calculated to make me look smarter, more recovered and certainly more spiritual, and of course i saw nothing wrong, after all, i was just telling it like it is, according to me.
naturally it was not until i worked a SIXTH STEP, in this fellowship, did i start to get a glimpse of what i was and was not. when the sonic boom of my pulling my head out of my a$$, finally quieted down, i saw myself, perhaps for the first time, as others had always seen me, and i was ashamed. i took on all those defects of character and i became a defective character, certain to be alone, live alone and have nothing to do with the world around me. as i came out of the shock of seeing who i was, i started to readjust my expectations and certainly as the reading strongly suggest, do what i could to bury all those defects in the deepest parts unknown i could find, and act in the exact opposite manner. ironically, finding less than stellar success in that effort, i became willing to have all my defects of character removed and moved into STEP SEVEN.
ancient history, aside, today i know that i am more than just a collection of thoughts, behaviors, feelings, defects and shortcomings. all of those go into making me who i am today, but the program of recovery has allowed me to be so much more. today, i still act on a defect of character or two and have a plethora of shortcomings, but the effect of those behaviors has been diminished, as i no longer NEED to react to every feeling or slight that comes my way.
easy to say, when i have yet to leave the house on the day after a quick snowfall, but as the day progresses i will see the reality of doing my best to allow the steps to be a part of my daily living, at least just for right now!

∞ DT ∞