Each Year of Sobriety Buys You One More Second Before You React: Fr. Tom W. – Tom W.

It's a
very good thing to be here.
My name is Tom, and I'm an alcoholic, and I'm in great need of 100,000 Al-Anon meetings.
And I want to spend some time this afternoon talking about some of the principles of Al-Anon
and Alcoholics Anonymous as they get involved with relationships and families and things
like that.
And this is a special kind of gathering.
And we get to do things a little differently than in more conventional settings, and I
like that.
I was fascinated with Jay's presentation this morning on early AA trial and error as we
try so many things and do a whole bunch of things, and the business with spiritualism,
which I have a fascination with, too.
There was a huge...
There was a huge increase in fascination with spiritualism after the American Civil
War and after World War I, and I think part of that is because there were so many who
were killed, such huge amounts of loss.
How can we make a connection with our brothers, with our sons, with our friends who have gone
before us?
It was a huge amount of grief was involved in that, and one of the great figures, as
Jay was talking, I was thinking of a woman I've read a little bit of, a Madame Blavatsky,
and you can Google her.
She was an exotic human being with many, many interests and skills, and she was involved
in a lot of things, including Indian independence.
She was a great spiritualist and metaphysician, Madame Blavatsky, and she became a mentor
of a young Indian activist by the name of Mohandas K. Gandhi.
And Gandhi is...
He was in South Africa.
He did a whole bunch of stuff, and then he moves to India and begins to get involved
with Indian independence, years and years and years and years of work, and he starts
public speaking, and he's not very good for a long time.
He wanders and he drifts and he gets involved in little details that no one cares about,
and at one point, Gandhi is giving a talk.
He's a young man, and Madame Blavatsky...
He was there, and he's holding forth, and no one's listening, and Madame Blavatsky stands
up and comes over to him and says, Gandhi, sit down, and he does.
So these are interesting folks, and I'm glad Jay helps us be aware of these folks, and
if I start wandering and get lost this afternoon, Jay, you get to be Madame Blavatsky, and you
can tell me to sit down.
We have a bunch of time, and I'd like to make good use of it, and the subject matter
is really very difficult.
Emotionally, it's difficult, and we might be feeling a little bit.
What I'd like to do is talk for about 40 minutes and then take a break, and originally, I thought
it would be a great idea to have groups discuss things.
That might not work.
We'll see in 40 minutes, and then come back for round two and continue talking about a
couple of other things about relationships, and I'm a Catholic priest.
I've never been married, so I'm an expert, and I have sponsees.
I belong to both programs and active...
Reasonably active in both programs.
But Al-Anon's tough.
Al-Anon's tough, and I do have some fellows I sponsor who have kids, and they want me
to say something about the mess, and my response is...
For a few years, I tried to do that, but I'm not very good at it.
My response is, you know, I taught kids, but I don't have kids.
You need to go and talk to a mom or a dad.
That's your...
That's your peer group, you know?
And if you're a grandparent who's crazy about impossible grandchildren, you need to go and
talk to grandparents, because that's the peer group.
And the genius, one of the genius moments of recovery is someone who's been there talks
to someone who is there, that radical equality.
The book, Alcoholics Anonymous, talks about...
Talks about a variety of kinds of alcoholics.
There's this kind, there's that kind, there's this kind, there's that kind.
And recovery takes a variety of forms for a lot of us.
I was sober for a few years before I decided I could use a little bit of Al-Anon.
And my experience in joining Al-Anon was it's kind of like stopping smoking.
You stop and you start and you stop and you start and you stop and you start.
Until you really join.
And then you join because you are so crazy.
I come to Al-Anon sober, but exhausted and enraged.
And I would have people say, well, isn't AA enough for you?
And my response was,
I'm going to be...
I'm going to be one of those sober people who shoots people.
So I need to learn how to deal with an impossible work situation
and a very complicated family situation.
And I simply don't know the language.
I don't know how this works.
And what drove me to Al-Anon the first couple of times was just sharp, sheer pain.
And then exhaustion and then pain.
And my experience the first time I went was I didn't like anybody there.
What a surprise.
I bump into people who say,
could you tell me a really good Al-Anon meeting?
There's no shortcut here.
You've got to find your own meetings.
Well, see, I don't want to be bored or depressed.
So could you just clarify all that?
No, no, no.
You have to do your own footwork.
And...
And...
And...
And if you have the gift of desperation,
G-O-D,
you will be glad to be at an Al-Anon meeting.
If you're not desperate enough, you're going to notice they're too old,
they're too fat, they're too thin,
they're too white, they're too black,
too many are knitting, not enough are knitting.
Too many women, not enough women.
Too many men, not enough men.
Too many of them...
All of our defenses come down to this.
They come up.
But if you're really desperate,
we look good to you.
And we're glad to see you.
Thank you.
So,
the first step of recovery,
powerless and unmanageable.
For those of us who are alcoholic,
it has a very clear meaning
because we know we're powerless over alcohol.
And our lives are unmanageable.
But that's also true for the people who love us
or work with us or live with us
or put up with us
or share air with us.
For them too, alcohol is power...
They're powerless and their lives are unmanageable
because they're with us.
In the book, Bill will talk about an alcoholic
is like a tornado roaring through the lives of others.
It's a good image.
And the tornado's over.
And you just can't come out of the cellar and say,
things look good.
Isn't it good the wind stopped blowing?
And Bill will say,
well, a long period of reconstruction is ahead.
And for the alcoholic,
this deals with inventories and amends
and asking God to remove defects of character.
And this can take years and years and years.
And this is also true for members
of the church.
This is also true for members of the family or friends.
The second step talks about being restored to sanity.
It's a funny word, sanity.
What's it look like?
What's it mean?
How do I know?
I think if you suspect that you're not crazy...
Excuse me.
I think if you suspect that you might be a little crazy,
it's a good sign.
Because a lot of us are.
I saw a wise therapist
and I was asking him about step two
about this sanity stuff being restored to sanity.
And I said,
do you think I'm okay?
Do you think I'm normal?
Because I always wanted to be normal.
And the shrink said to me,
normal is 98.6.
And I said, well, what am I trying to say?
He said, you're trying to say, are you okay?
Are you healthy?
And I said, how do you know?
Especially for those of us
who tend to be hypochondriacs.
I have those tendencies myself.
If I don't sleep well at night,
I can usually feel the cancer growing in my bones.
As I was flying here,
I live in Oakland.
And there it says I'm from Berkeley,
and it's misspelled.
Come on now.
Oakland, spelled right.
And as I was on this very full plane,
United Airlines,
the lady two rows behind me
had cholera or typhoid fever
or something awful.
And she was full of phlegm.
And I knew that it would be the Ebola virus
before I got my bag out of checking.
So my brain goes in those directions,
I understand, catastrophizing.
I understand the end of the world scenarios.
I understand doom day.
I mean, I get all that.
So what does sanity look like?
What does health look like?
If you're healthy, how do you know?
And Leonard the Shrink said,
healthy people can do three kinds of things.
Healthy people can work.
Healthy people can love.
And healthy people can play.
If you know someone who can work, love, and play,
you know someone who's doing pretty well.
And I spent several years
just trying to figure out
what any of those things meant.
I come into Al-Anon from a dysfunctional family.
I'm a family.
And alcoholism and a lot of other things were there.
We functioned pretty well.
We were your basic San Jose, California,
Eisenhower voting, church going, you know, citizens.
But there was a lot of crazy in the family
that simply didn't get talked about.
The word dysfunctional gets thrown around a lot.
In fact, I think we even made the cover
of either Timers.
or Newsweek once,
dysfunctional families,
dysfunctional organizations,
dysfunctional systems.
I bump into...
Now, this is not judgment.
It's observation.
I bump into people who say,
I just want to find a workplace that's not crazy.
And I want to say,
what planet are you on?
There are no workplaces that aren't crazy.
You know?
Like, well, I want to work in recovery.
Oh, do you?
I was invited to come up and speak
at an adolescent treatment facility
in Northern California some years ago.
And I drove up and came with a pal of mine.
And the kids were all wearing pajamas on lockdown,
like San Quentin.
And the staff were all crazy
and screaming and shouting and yelling at each other.
And...
And...
Then there was the staff, the administrators,
and they were in a very smoke-filled room.
And I was supposed to talk to the kids,
but...
So they said,
come on and talk to us,
the administrators.
And, you know,
they'd been yelling and screaming
and something got stolen and...
Brrrr!
Anyway, they'd been like this for 48 hours.
And with the wisdom of Solomon,
I said,
So do any of you go to Al-Anon?
And they said, why would we do that?
And I said, because the kids have won.
Addiction is calling the shots here,
and you've been sucked into it.
You know, you're the ones who are miserable.
The kids are having a great day.
You know, you're little addicts.
What does healthy look like?
What does healthy look like?
Well, everyone here's a workaholic.
Well, that's right.
We do that a lot.
Well, everyone here blames everyone else.
We do that a lot.
The whole country does that a lot.
Soon as something goes wrong,
our first tendency as Americans...
Thank you.
That's a very lucky book.
I think her first name was Helena Blabatsky.
Thank you, Helena.
Very useful.
Very useful.
Just before Jay interrupted me,
what was I going to say?
I thought the image of him dressed like Helena Blabatsky
with the big hat and the feathers,
it's just breathtaking.
Blaming.
Part of our culture,
find someone to blame, find someone to sue,
and that'll solve the problem.
If anything happens,
blame somebody, sue somebody.
And we think this is normal.
We think,
this is the way that grown-ups act.
It's not grown-ups.
It's crazy people.
Dysfunctional.
Workplaces, home places,
hospitals, institutions, churches.
Please.
Schools.
Graduate schools.
Universities.
Research centers.
All kinds of people who are
surviving as best they can.
I used to think that when the word
dysfunctional was used,
that it was D-I-S, functional.
Dysfunctional doesn't work.
But that's not it.
It's D-Y-S.
It's a Greek root, not a Latin root.
It means it works,
but it hurts.
If when you pee,
it hurts,
you have dysuria.
It is a common medical thing.
And the thing with dysfunctional families
is there's some functioning work gets done,
but a lot of people there are in great pain.
And we have to learn ways of dulling the pain,
of getting away from the pain,
of ignoring the pain.
And that's one reason why so many of us
go into the world of denial.
Nothing's wrong here.
We're all just fine.
How are you? Fine.
How are you? Fine.
Nice to see you. Fine.
So we talk about
the elephant in the living room
or the rhinoceros in the living room
when it comes to alcoholism
and people just talk around it.
We use circumlocution.
We use equivocation.
We lie.
But we don't talk about it
because it hurts too much.
One of the more recent books
that has come out
in the Al-Anon literature
is on losses.
And it's a big book about grief.
And if you've been to AA for a while
or if you're from an alcoholic family
or if you have a lot of friends
who are alcoholics and addicts,
there's a lot of losses.
Overdoses, suicides.
Accidents.
Great hopes, great futures
snuffed out over and over and over again.
I don't think I started noticing that
until I was maybe 10 years clean and sober.
And then I began noticing
people no longer there.
Someone comes in and there's such hope
and it just goes away.
Losses.
Claudia Black writes a very fine text
entitled,
It Will Never Happen to Me.
And both of her parents were alcoholic
and they lived across the street
from a very active bar.
And she was the middle child.
And they observed a lot
and they would see people go into the bar
and out of the bar.
Sometimes with the same partner,
sometimes with different partner or partners.
And she talked about the craziness.
Her parents were over there a lot.
And if you have alcoholism or addiction in the family,
you get used to crazy.
Things are so unpredictable.
And for a while, this can be fun.
Fun.
Fun plus problems.
Problems.
She'll write about inappropriate behavior.
Crazy behavior.
You get used to the unexpected.
And you can't overreact to impossible things
or you'll just go crazy.
So you don't see things.
You don't talk about things.
You don't feel things.
In fact, the three rules that she writes about
are number one, don't talk.
Two, don't trust.
Three, don't feel.
Four, if you don't talk about it,
if you don't trust anybody,
if you don't feel anything,
you can survive.
And that's what we're going to do.
And those are skills to help us survive.
When we come into recovery,
we have to learn how to talk about things
without blaming or suing anybody.
Tell the truth.
What happened?
We have to learn how to trust some people.
And we have to learn how to feel.
The whole new...
Vocabulary and language,
the language of feelings.
And I sure didn't want to learn it.
I want a simple life with no emotions.
Thank you very much.
And I want to live in my head where it's safe.
My goodness.
So Claudia will say one day,
she's home.
Her parents were out.
Her brother and sister are in the house.
And she's about 14 or 15.
She has a boyfriend over.
They're watching TV.
And suddenly there is a knock on the front door.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
And she opens.
And there's a guy from the bar across the street
who's had a couple of social drinks
and who looks very agitated.
And this guy says,
Do you have any deodorant?
And without...
She goes to the bathroom
and gets some deodorant and brings it out.
He puts deodorant on,
hands it back to her.
He leaves.
She closes the door.
She goes back to the bathroom.
She comes, sits next to her boyfriend.
And he turns to her and he said,
Who was that?
And she said,
Who was who?
See, if you're going to remember stuff like that,
you're going to have to make changes.
So you just don't pay attention.
You shut down.
You shut down to all kinds of things.
And it takes...
Some of us prefer sedation.
Now, we can be sedated with alcohol.
We can be sedated with marijuana,
two of my very personal favorites.
We can be sedated with the whole world of chemicals.
We can also be sedated through exhaustion and overwork.
Stay busy all the time.
Stay tired all the time.
You won't have to worry about emotions.
But when you start getting well,
stuff starts coming back.
And this can be very unpleasant.
People are in AA for a short period of time.
And sometimes those first months are the pink cloud.
You're so glad to be here.
I was.
I was...
Well, not so glad.
I was in a kind of a gray area.
I wasn't glad to be here,
but I was glad I wasn't out there anymore.
Took a while to warm up to you people.
But, you know, then you get just so happy to be here.
I love meetings.
I love meetings.
I love the people at meetings.
Pink cloud.
And then things fall apart.
Now what happens?
And people will say things like,
oh, keep coming back.
It gets better.
So I was at a meeting.
I had maybe four or five years,
so I knew everything.
And by the way,
I noticed people give sobriety dates here.
My last drink was on the day
or my first day sober
was on the day that Gerald Ford
was nominated for president of the United States.
So you can figure that out.
Um...
Sigh...
Madame Blavatsky took my brain right away again.
This time it was Gerald Ford wearing the hat and the dress
and I just got so confused.
Um...
Four or five years and you know it.
Thank you.
This lady came in
to the meeting and she was complaining.
Now I know you don't do this,
but I do take inventory and I do judge.
And I do judge.
And I didn't like anything about her.
So she complained and whined and sniveled
and then it was my turn to talk
and I was confident and mature
and so deeply insightful.
And I ended my little spiel
by saying to this lady,
keep coming back.
It gets better.
Which is very condescending, you know,
and patronizing,
but I was condescending and patronizing.
Um...
Sigh...
And she looked at me and she said,
we do not say that in New York.
And I said, well, what do you say in New York?
And she said, in New York we say,
keep coming back.
First it gets better.
Then it gets worse.
Then it gets real.
Then it gets different.
Then it gets real different.
Sigh...
And this is my experience.
That rings true.
Today it's real different.
Anyway, I'm sober.
Went to an Al-Anon musical.
I felt the same thing.
What are they singing about, you know?
I mean, I think a lot of country western music
is written by people who need a lot of Al-Anon.
There's a lot of broken hearts
and betrayals and...
being stood up and...
I know when I was drinking a little socially,
Patsy Cline sure spoke my language.
And there's that...
I fall to pieces
each time someone speaks your name.
You got to get to a meeting immediately
is what you have to do.
Crazy for feeling so...
Yes, come on, we'll both go.
And this is one that crosses
both the AA and the Al-Anon line.
It's Ray Charles.
And I'll tell you,
there was a certain point in the early morning
where if I heard Mr. Charles go,
born to lose...
I've lived my life in vain.
I felt so bonded to him.
So I go to this music.
I mean, that's music.
Anyway, I go to the Al-Anon musical
and these are perky people.
It's very surprising.
A lot of them young.
Early Al-Anon was mostly wives.
And they were very sensitive about that.
And there is a thing about
we're not A's, cookie bakers.
There's a lot of that in early...
We have our own program.
We have our own crazy.
But mostly it was women
and that had a whole culture.
Married women, that had a whole culture.
Men started coming into Al-Anon
with adult children.
A lot of males started coming into Al-Anon
and that began changing some of the culture.
So there were men and women
at this Al-Anon musical
and they had some whiz kid with a piano
who could...
take popular melodies
and write the words to songs.
I have friends like that.
I admire them very much.
And this one was about the family disease
and the music went...
It's 11.30 and the cops are here.
I could use the rent to bail him out.
Then he'll be so happy
he'll give up the beer.
But...
But just in case
I think I'll pour it down the spout.
Chorus comes out singing
D-E-N-I-A-L
Life goes on
La la la la
Life goes on
And just like you I laughed.
I said they get it.
I know this.
I've had friendships like that.
I've done that in family stuff.
I am a rescuer.
I will help you.
I will cover the bills.
I will drive you home.
I had people who did that for me.
They put me in the shower.
And drive me off and put me to bed.
I mean all of our little enabling friends.
Ha ha ha.
Very funny.
Then a little boy, young man got up and sang
Daddy is in the kitchen with a drunken face.
Maybe it was something that I did.
Brother Billy touched me in a funny place.
It must be me.
I'll try to be...
Be a better kid.
And I burst into tears.
And someone with the wisdom of Solomon standing next to me said
Boy, that got to you, didn't it?
It really did.
So my conclusion was to stay away from Al-Anon.
I don't want to go there and feel those things.
But when I was tired enough and angry enough
I started going...
And...
And it helps me live my life.
There's craziness if you love alcoholics,
if you marry alcoholics,
if you are a mom or a dad to an alcoholic.
And some of us just don't write country western songs.
We always...
We also write poetry.
And this is a poem written by Ann Kennedy.
And she's my sponsor's...
Sponsor's wife.
And it's just a little postcard of an alcoholic evening.
And it goes like this.
Last night, my neighbor menaced his wife with an axe.
He smashed the windshield...
The windshield of her Cadillac in a drunken rage.
We heard their screams up on Buck Mountain.
So you got that?
You got that scene?
Ever been in one of those events?
Whether it's you or the people next door?
Last night, my neighbor menaced his wife with an axe.
He smashed the windshield of her Cadillac in a drunken rage.
We heard their screams up on Buck Mountain.
This morning, I saw them in their rowboat quietly fishing for cod.
Their knees were touching.
She was wearing his cap.
This morning, I saw them in their rowboat quietly fishing for cod.
Their knees were touching.
She was wearing his cap.
Intimate, sweet, friendly.
Last night never happened.
Now, it's hard to explain the smashed window on the Cadillac.
But if you don't pay attention to these things, it doesn't really matter, does it?
Yeah.
Sigh.
Sigh.
You are really a wonderful person until you drink.
And then I don't know what to expect.
I thought what I'd do a little bit this afternoon is talk about some of the tools of recovery
that I find helpful.
Then we can take a break, and then we'll do a few more tools in recovery.
Al-Anon uses the same 12 steps.
I think that Al-Anon is a more subtle program than AA.
I think it is.
I think it is the Ur-Rund program of being a human being.
Some people do learn this at home.
I know some people who are pretty healthy people who don't need meetings.
But I needed to learn the most basic thing.
One of the things that is just – so I'm going to Al-Anon.
I'm just starting.
I tried it.
I didn't like it.
I'm back.
I tried it.
And I went to a meeting that was largely made up of adult children, and I am one of those.
I'm the youngest of three.
And there's alcoholism all over the family, and we never called it alcoholism.
On the Irish Catholic Democratic side of the family, we had characters.
Characters.
Isn't Sean a character?
Yeah, you bet he is.
And I found out that in a lot of dysfunctional families and in crazy systems, you speak in code.
And you have to understand the code to understand anything.
And I didn't know that until I was in my mid-30s.
I was so naive.
We don't talk about alcoholism in my family.
We also don't talk about cancer.
If you are dying of cancer, the way we talk about it is, Harriet's not feeling well.
That's what that means.
And you have to hear with a very deep ear.
Oh, my God, I better go see her now.
And that was my cousin Harriet was dying of cancer, and I was told, you know, Harriet's not feeling very well.
Oh, I said, well, I'll get around to seeing her, meaning in the next couple of months.
Well, she was then dead.
Why didn't you go see her?
I didn't know she was dying.
I thought.
You know, well, you should have known.
You should have known.
You should have been able to read our hearts.
You should have been able to read our brains.
I don't do that.
You got to tell me.
Well, we don't do it that way.
Oh, great.
Thank you.
On the Irish, on the Swedish Lutheran Republican side of the family, we didn't have alcoholics either.
We had nervous people.
And they would get so nervous they'd be hospitalized and no longer nervous.
Come out of the hospital, be fine.
DTs were referred to as nervous spells.
When I came home, I was sober a couple of months.
I got sober in August.
Republican Convention, August.
And.
A bunch of people were coming, family, up to my parents' house for Christmas Eve.
And I was pretty jumpy.
And my mom noticed I was jumpy.
I mean, she is observant.
That's one of the things about being surrounded by alcoholics.
You're observant.
You're looking for tragedy and danger at any moment.
You don't talk about it, but you know it's there.
Scanning the room.
I have that skill.
And she noticed I was a little goofy.
And she said, what's wrong?
And I thought she wanted to know.
Now, to save you a lot of trouble, if either one of your parents says what's wrong,
what they want to hear is, I've got a little gas.
That's all they want to hear.
I've got a little gas.
Everything's fine.
I'll be fine tomorrow.
I didn't know that.
I hadn't really figured out the family code of avoidance.
And I said, well, I'm not going to do that.
I said, well, this is a moment for mother-son intimacy.
And I thought I heard at a meeting that if you tell the truth, the whole family gets well.
Now, this is not true.
And do not try this at home without your sponsor hanging around.
But I said, well, I'm an alcoholic and I haven't had a drink since August and I'm pretty nervous about tonight.
And she put down the silverware, looked at me and said, you'll ruin Christmas.
Because I said the A-word.
This is not to be talked about.
And don't you think you have the gumption to break that rule?
We're going to talk around it.
Not feeling well.
So, I come to Al-Anon and a large group of adult children.
And they said, here are some things we find helpful.
And the first thing they said that was helpful was in our recovery.
It's not just, you know, learning how to talk and learning how to trust and learning how to feel.
They said, we need to understand that a lot of us are great reactors.
Give us something and we react.
So, in our recovery, we have to learn how to act rather than react.
It's the first slogan.
Act rather than react.
And to do that, it means you have to be centered.
To do that, it means you have to be connected to a power greater than yourself.
To do that, it's really helpful if you have a fellowship of friends and companions and allies.
Otherwise, I react.
And I don't always react.
Well, I heard this at a meeting that each year of recovery gives you one more second of response time.
So, in your first year of recovery, something happens.
And within a second, you're saying or doing something.
It's knee jerk.
Boom, boom.
Well, ten years, you've got ten seconds.
And that can save your life.
I've got thirty-six seconds.
And in thirty-six seconds, here's a couple of things that have occurred to me in thirty-six seconds.
When something happens.
It might occur to me that what's going on is none of my business.
That's another great slogan.
A lot of things are none of my business.
Even if they're my kids.
It's none of my business.
I mean, once they're adults, you know.
I have a tendency to control for their own good.
And I know I have a sponsee who's a gangbanger from Modesto.
Very interesting.
But, you know, I've been around for a while.
You learn how you learn.
You do what you do.
And little by little, we've had conversations.
And little by little, we've had conversations.
And after I was his sponsor for a couple of months, I had the talk.
And I explained, you know, in recovery, we learn how to do everything differently.
How we deal with stress.
How we deal with this.
I mean, everything changes in recovery.
That was my inspiring little talk.
Covered with tattoos.
And this young man looked at me and he said,
I am hanging out with an old white guy.
I am changing a lot.
And a lot of it's none of my business, even though he's my sponsee.
I really do.
I really do believe that.
And you check with people and you check with people and you check with people.
We went to the international conference in San Antonio, which was a great experience.
And I hope to see most of you in Atlanta.
Texas is so hot, we can't go.
Oh, please.
Air conditioning, you'll be fine.
And I wanted to.
He'd never been on a plane.
He'd never been to Texas.
Never been to a restaurant with a tablecloth.
I mean.
And I got.
He got off the plane.
I met him there and I wanted to watch him.
Make sure he did it right.
But because of my perfect Al-Anon program, I said, OK, I want you to cut his meat, wipe his butt.
Are you OK?
Take his temperature every few minutes.
International conference.
Very frightening.
And I said, oh, it's like taking someone to Disneyland.
You find what you have to do is this.
You say, OK, this is the matter.
And in five hours, I'll meet you back here.
I hope you live.
And then he took off.
This kid who'd never been anywhere.
And after five hours, I saw him.
I said, where have you been?
He said, I hooked up with a bunch of Germans.
And I said, I didn't know you spoke German.
I don't speak any German.
He said, I've had the best time.
It's not how you do it.
You should.
Oh, well.
A lot of things are none of my business.
And I want to learn how to act rather than react.
One of my friends started going to Al-Anon
because he wanted to learn how to give better advice.
And that's one of the Al-Anon crazinesses.
We're advice givers.
Can I give you a little advice?
Usually, that's someone who hasn't been to a meeting in a few years.
And the answer is no.
Aren't you using it?
This guy's name is Jim H.
He said, I don't.
I don't judge.
I diagnose.
That's what he said.
Which is fine.
I was at a meeting in Dallas, Texas.
And this fellow talked about the serenity prayer.
Now, I like the serenity prayer.
It's short.
I like that about a prayer.
And the way I've usually understood it
is it's I'm in a knot or my brain is in a knot
or my gut is in a knot.
Serenity prayer.
Give me some serenity, period.
But that's not the prayer.
The prayer is based on a very wise spiritual principle.
And it's about act, don't react.
That's what it is.
When is it a good time to make decisions?
Not when I'm high.
Not when I'm low.
I want to be in the middle place.
Give me some serenity.
Some breathing room.
Some oxygen.
A little bit of peace.
Because I have to make some decisions.
See, there's some stuff I cannot change.
And I need to know what that is.
And there's some stuff I have to change.
And I need to know what that is.
So this guy from Texas, Dallas,
said, here are three things I cannot change.
I cannot change the past.
I cannot change the truth.
And I cannot change you.
Well, that frees up the whole day.
You know?
I can't tell you how many years I tried to change my parents.
I can't tell you.
And they would have been so much happier if they followed just a few of my suggestions.
When I stopped trying to do that, we got along better.
My mom and I had a lot of difficulties.
And when I stopped publicly criticizing her, we got along better.
How does that work?
A lot of Al-Anon, again, this is part of minding your own business,
it's keep your big fat mouth shut.
But, but shut.
But shut.
For your 23 seconds of recovery, don't say anything.
And then sometimes I realize I don't have to say anything.
They get to be who they are.
One of my Al-Anon pals is a woman named Stephanie from Texas.
I'm surrounded by Texans.
How does that happen?
And she's a teacher, of course.
So many of us in Al-Anon,
we're teachers, we're social workers,
we're nurses in intensive care units.
We're cops.
We're not just military, we're Marines.
I can't tell you the percentage of those brave young women and men in the Marine Corps
who are from crazy families.
We're clergy, we're social.
We do so many things.
We're on the front lines so many times.
And we're full of idealism and terror and anxiety.
A hundred thousand Al-Anon meetings help.
Stephanie is a teacher and one of her crazinesses
is she says she has a need to over-explain.
She's convinced
that the reason you're screwing up
is because you don't understand.
And if she could just present it to you
in a way
that you would understand it,
you would no longer be a jerk.
My mother's version of the story
of the exact same crazy was
if it's true,
it's worth saying once,
it's worth saying 500 times.
And I can't tell you
the white rage
I go into
when that happens to me
as a 65-year-old adult.
I know when I was 11,
it would just be,
let me tell you one,
and if I had had guns,
we would have made the news.
So coming into recovery in Al-Anon,
I had to stop a lot of my reacting
to people's behavior.
I have about two more minutes of material
and then we're going to take a little break.
And the great insight for me was
in my stuff with my folks
or the stuff with my church
or the stuff with my country
or the stuff with the neighbors next door.
It's my craziness.
I can't change the past,
can't change the truth,
and I can't change them.
But what can I change?
This guy from Dallas said,
I can change my thinking,
I can change my behavior,
and I can change my attitudes.
I needed to learn some new ways
of rewiring my brain.
And it takes years.
And life is different.
Just the simple awareness of acting
rather than reacting,
and a lot of things are none of my business,
has saved lives.
I was at the airport in Chicago
a couple of years ago
and it's the holidays
and flying is always difficult
and in the holidays it's worse.
And I...
I was at the airport in Chicago
and I was at the airport in Chicago
and I was at the airport in Chicago
and I was at the airport in Chicago
and I was at the airport in Chicago
and I don't talk to people in airports,
I don't visit,
I don't share.
I mostly dislike everybody.
Even getting on the plane
from San Francisco to here
and disabled people come on first
and I have no problem with that,
but this was a really slow disabled person.
And I...
And I...
I felt the fury.
I just felt the fury.
And she probably took
two or three minutes.
And it was an eternity
and I'm glad I kept my big mouth shut
and I didn't have to ask anybody,
don't you think that old lady's
taking a long time just because she can't walk?
I didn't have to say that.
And I could let myself feel the discomfort
and keep my big mouth shut
and wish them well.
And wish them well.
But my first two or three to five thoughts
aren't friendly.
So I'm in Chicago
and everyone's...
It's the holidays
and people are tired
and people are cranky
and there was a family.
Now I used to...
You have children on the plane,
oh, this isn't going to be good.
Stephanie Miller talks about
screaming baby airlines
and I can just get hostile.
So...
Because it's my convenience, right?
But I've been an outlier.
I've been an al-anon for a while
and I've been sober for a while
and I'm an adult
and I have a little bit of compassion
and I realize
if you're a mom or a dad
and you're traveling with a couple of kids,
you need all the love and support you could get
because this is terrifying.
Terrifying stuff.
And there was a little boy,
they were a couple of kids.
The little boy was six or seven years old,
maybe younger, I'm not sure.
I'm not good on kids' ages.
But he was done.
You know, they had flown in from...
somewhere, they were flying out to somewhere
and his face was so red
and he was just crying.
He'd reached the end
of his little emotional rope
and he was done.
And I witnessed the scene, you know,
just with the cold, cold, detached self.
And what I wanted to do,
what occurred to me
is I could go up to the mom
and simply say,
he needs a drink.
There is no one in this airport
that needs a drink more than your little boy.
And if you gave him a drink today,
he's going to have a much better day.
You'll have trouble later on,
but you can get through today.
But I kept my big mouth shut
because it was none of my business.
It was none of my business.
Learning boundaries.
Learning appropriate boundaries.
Learning how to keep my big mouth shut.
Learning how to ask God for help.
Learning how to live and let live.
Creates a whole new earth.
How's this?
And we'll do this by, you know,
the voice of the people is the voice of God.
Ten-minute break.
And then come back and we'll see what happens.
Or should we do small groups?
The voice of the people.
Ten minutes.
Come on back.