Sandy B. on Political Correctness, Ebby T., and Spiritual Survival — Part 3 of 4

The word God is not received as kindly as it was back then. I was helping a gal having a terrible time getting sober because she just couldn't deal with the God thing. She had just graduated about five years earlier from Harvard and she said that her peers would just take her apart if she ever said anything about God, that it was just so out of fashion, so out of peer pressure, she just had to eliminate even thinking about that. And then she came in here and here we are saying, no, you're going to have to get crumpled with dough. Well, what if my class finds out? You follow what I'm saying? So it's a whole different environment. So it is up to us that understand that without God there is no AA. to make sure that we never compromise on talking about the importance of God, that there is no program without God. And it's not an easy conversation to have in our society today. No. But we'll kill a lot of alcoholics if we try to find a way. Yeah, and it's the only – and I don't think AA is being watered down. As a matter of fact, I think these people that are talking about back to basics, you know, that we're back to doing the things that we always used to do. I mean, the impression I get, I came in in 67. You know, I mean we're using the big book five times as much as we used it in the early days. I mean it just was not used as effectively taking people through the book in a more formal way. I think there's more of that happening. I think sponsorship is every bit as strong. But one of the main differences, I was at a little deal last weekend and one of the doctors, Burns B., was presenting. He said one ofthe differences today is he said when I came in there were 30 old-timers over five years for every new guy. Today there's 30 new people for every old-timer. So, I mean, the group I came into, the meeting I went into, I mean, there were like 25 or 30 people. They were all quite a bit older. They all had a fair amount of sobriety. and I was a new person in the group for, I don't know, four months, five. You know, I mean, there weren't people, new people coming in every day. You got a heck of a lot of attention in that process. And that business about getting the car, that's a personality thing. There are people today who have the personality that can tell someone to get in the car and someone gets in the care. The rest of us, if we were to copy that, it doesn't sound right. I mean it doesn�t, it isn't me. So if it's you, it still works, you know. Well, there's growing pains are just part of any society you belong to and we're in a big one now it's bigger and bigger and so you're going to get things I'll use the example of political correctness and suddenly that's finding its way into AA but if we apply that too far we're going to have people dying because we're not telling them you know, we're gonna have to hurt their feelings if we're gunna tell them the truth you can't couch it and oh I'm sorry if that offends you we won't do it in our group well when I was new there's a lot of things that offended me about AA I didn't know that if you said offend that you've got a special treatment because not drinking offended me and I'm very glad they didn't go oh we can't offend him so let's not talk about not drinking and let's not do this and so we've got to be very careful to not this is just my own personal opinion but in some groups they got rid of the Lord's Prayer because someone didn't like it. It's a big deal all over the country. Now that's the worst reason for getting rid of it you got a new person that doesn't like it so we change it so what are we teaching that person self-centeredness works if you demand that AA adjusts to you it will well the program says we're going to show you how to adjust to the world and then you'll be happy because the world isn't going to adjust to you all the time And so there's a, what a terrible lesson to show to a new person that if you don't like something, we'll change it. That's wonderful. Do you follow what I'm saying? Wonderful. That could get them drunk. Now on the other hand, if the group had another reason, maybe they suddenly looked around and said, hey, you know, 80% of the people in our group are Jewish. Why don't we learn the Jewish prayer and say it? That would be a good reason for changing. Do you follow what I'm saying? Because they all wanted to do something new. It wasn't because somebody didn't like it. That's just so terrible. I don't like this. There's too much talk about the steps. It offends me. We'll talk more about the step. I mean, it's just... That's the lesson. The whole spiritual program is to show how to adjust. You get the power to adjust to whatever's happening, and then events have no effect on your peace of mind, and that's a very powerful thing to have. And so that's just my two cents worth on that. I heard Nelson on call. You talked a little bit of, you made a statement, one of the statements that I heard in the earlier session was that somebody felt that Dr. Bob would get to do, and what I'd like to hear is a little about Evie and the relationship between Bill and Bob and Evie. With the showing of the TV program that was just on, you see that they were really close and that they had an extended relationship and I've heard stories about what has happened with that vehicle. Please tell us a little bit about it. Okay, you want to do it, Bob? I've been talking too much. No, you haven't. That's one of the most wonderful things. You are one of my heroes, and being with you is a joy. I'll say a few things. I'd like Sandy to correct me because they were boyhood friends. They, I'm not even, it was Manchester, but he went up and Ebi's family summered in one of the cottages up there where Bill lived. And they were friends and then drank. He was one of Bill's early drinking companions. So they were close kind of all the way through, and Evi's brother. Bill referred to Ebi. Ebi never had a hell of a lot of sobriety. A year and a half or two years when he died, he had a couple of periods where he had a couple of years, I remember one group from Texas drove up in an automobile to New York and cornered Bill. They were at a meeting. They said, let's go to New York. Got in a goddamn car. That's Texas, I think. It is. That could happen in a lot of bars. When they were done with that, they looked over and they said to Bill, Bill, is there anything we can do for you? And he said, yeah, well, you take another crack at Ebi. And so they went and found him, and he was in really bad shape, and they took him back to Texas for, I don't know, six, eight years? Yeah, he had a lot of sobriety near the end. And he went down there with Circe Whalen and a group, and they really focused a lot of attention. It was probably the best period of time that he had in his life. Bill referred to Ebby as his sponsor his entire life. And Ebby, and I'm going to say this sounds kind of sad, but if you heard Ebby I've only heard one thing one talk of Ebby's in the conversations it's like he didn't get it. It's like he didn' t get it he didn''t understand the miracle. I mean you know he would say things like I've been mostly sober you know I mean I've had much more sobriety than not I mean he didn ''t He didn't seem to understand the wonder of which he was a seminal part of. And that's what I would say about that. Well, one of the big things is that his spiritual transformation was big when he joined the Oxford group and had an awakening. It was so big that that's What convinced Bill to try it. It wasn't anything that he said. It's the way he looked because Bill knew he was a mess and this guy sitting across the table from him, Bill kept staring at him to make sure it wasn't a double or something because his entire energy was different. He was a different person but he didn't maintain that. So you can have a very powerful spiritual awakening and if you don't maintain it, it can go south. You know what I mean? He played a very important role, there's no doubt about it. And Dr. Bob knew him and respected the role that he played. And they worked so hard to try and keep him sober. Bill would introduce him at conferences, you know, the Long Beach International Convention. My sponsor, Evie. He just wanted, I think he wanted history to look kindly on Ebi. You know what I mean? You're bringing up the question. He played such an important role, and he probably was a good example for how not to do it. You know, that you look and you just go, boy, you can be right in there. You can be Bill's best friend. And still, if you don't maintain your contact, ball, you're going to go down. So there was I'm glad you brought his name up it was it's a huge piece of our history We have time for one last question Robbie here alcoholic I'd be remiss in saying I didn't make sure that he'd come in today so I'll throw that out first But the second thing is we have something coming up very soon, and it's the International. And it's going to be in San Antonio in July. And if you don't know about it, it's a really big deal. The last one was in Toronto, and I can only imagine how big San Antonio is going to be. Could you maybe speak on the upcoming International and how those have played a role in AACE history and a three-part question, I'm sorry, international growth in the future in places like India and China that I think you're going to explore? Here's the expert. Oh yeah, that's because you don't want to answer the question. The fastest growth in Alcoholics Anonymous is in other parts of the world. I've been to meetings in Beijing and Hong Kong. I have been in meetings in Mumbai and in India. India has a good grounding in Alcoholics Anonymous. China is growing and doesn't yet have the traction. It's funny, when AA is growing around the world, one of the big problems they have, especially in Eastern Europe, is the people who are – we were so blessed. Like the United States. When the United State had people like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and, you know, I mean, we had these bright, educated men who were the second sons of families that, you know, came over here to, you know, because they weren't going to inherit their thing and they were over here seeking their – and when we started this country, we had some wonderful people to step up to design our democracy. When we designed Alcoholics Anonymous, I mean, Richardson and Rockefeller and Leonard Strong and the different people that we had. They were wonderful non-alcoholic. So you go to these Eastern European countries, they're more low-bottom drugs. They don't have, you know, many, many of the early 100 people we had were kind of the black sheep of good families, you knows, that were educated and principled and had a sense of that. And so when you go to a place and you're trying to establish a general service office and most of the guys or gals are low-bottom and don't have much sense of organization and then not being able to attract the right kind of Class A trustees, you have a little trouble doing that. I don't think internationals have played a hell of a role since 1955 in Alcoholics Anonymous. I think they're a celebration, and I don't think they've been very seminal. I mean, in 1950 we passed the traditions, and in 1955 we came of age and we formalized the general service structure of alcohol autonomous. With that exception, I can't think of anything earth-shattering that we've done at International, and I think the one in San Antonio will be very interesting and quite wonderful. I should keep my mouth shut. Please. In 1980, I was asked to speak at the one in New Orleans, and I'd spoken to Superdome, and it was a big deal, and I really, oh boy, this is really wonderful. I was there. And that was Marty Mann's last talk. and it's you know wow it's mind blowing and all these people holding hands saying the Lord's Prayer it's probably the most powerful thing in the world until somebody came along and decided we won't say the Lord'S Prayer anymore so if you're going to go say the LordS Prayer no matter what they tell you to say Amen When you think about it, 70,000 people. Now, I don't know how to do the percentage real fast on AA's 4 million, but it's a very tiny percentage that can afford to go and that do go. And so it's fun. It's a chance to sort of get some publicity, the local town, the newspapers. But as far as substance happening, it happens in your group. All of AA action occurs up to the intergroup level. And then there's things happen above that that sometimes have value, but we do get pamphlets changed and things like that. I'm just saying. You can be a jerk, too. Bob is the delegate and going to run the New York office. We don't see eye-to-eye on things about the group. AA is the groups and the message is carried one alcoholic to another so 99% of everything is the group and the inner group and then this becomes there are some issues that require heavy duty thinking by the staff and trustees and the delegates. My final thing, just to express my views. At conventions where they introduce former delegates, I think they should also introduce former coffee makers. Thank you. He got more applause. But I think you need it. So, the subject of this afternoon's workshop, and we're going to do a workshop for about 45 minutes, come back, talk for 15 minutes, and then have questions and answers. I've been sober since December of 67. And so as my friends who know me since high school and grade school would come up and say, why are you still going to Alcoholics Anonymous? I mean, you haven't had a drink in 42 years. You know, why do you have to keep going to meetings? And I'd say, well, I have a gift for being a jerk. And when I attend meetings on a regular basis, I'm not quite as big a jerk but it's where I maintain my spiritual condition I don't know why I have such a dense mind I don' t know why it's so busy I don''t know why It's so negative and I don ''t ask for those things but It's been very busy and very negative since I've been a young guy and I think we all have different internal conversations I'm one of seven kids my brothers and sisters don't seem to have quite as dense we have a few we have one member and maybe a potential member in that group but they just don't have as heavy a mind as I do and I look at my bride my wife is kind of a naturally healthy person and I'm just more intense you know, I'm climbing mountains to try to have the spiritual experience she has just living her daily life you know I've got to read the right books and do the right exercises and stuff like this And so the subject was going to be, it was kind of ongoing surrender. And the thing that opens us up to, you know, we've been talking about things spiritual. And the choice is, as Chuck Chamberlain used to say, you can either have a God-centered life and suffer the consequences or you can have a self-centered wife and suffer for the consequences. That's a pretty big choice. Life is very different when you're God- centered and very different when you're self-centered. If you're talking to someone who's having a fight with their wife, a serious fight about whether they think they want to stay married, that conversation is a very different conversation when there's no God in the conversation at all. And it's always interesting, I think, when we're members of Alcoholics Anonymous and our book talks about it over and over again, is for us to pray for what God's will is for it. It's always one of the things I think as a mark about are you really in the game when it gets really serious? Do you even want to know what God wants for you? And a lot of us go kind of nuts. At the time that we're going nuts, we don't want to knows what God want's for us. That's not a question that we are up for answering. I'm going through kind of a tough time business wise and my biggest fear, my big fear is that God wants me to be poor and happy. And it is, you know, we say we don' t have conditions. You know, I want God's will for me, but, but I mean, isn't that funny? We have a fear that if I really open myself up to what God would have me do, I still have this part of me that thinks I'm going to go be a missionary in China. And so I'm resistant to opening myself, completely opening myself up for what that is. And I think that's nonsense. I really think it's nonsense and I think we rob ourselves. I think I rob myself of peace in that process. I thinkI rob myselfof being held in the hands of God as opposed to trying to figure it out myself. The stress that I feel trying to go through the circumstances that I'm in right now is when I use my little eye intellect to figure out a plan that's going to get me through the woods. And most of the problems that I get presented with in my life, when they're right in front of me and they're really fairly significant, what we do when we have those situations is we do a dump. We boot up our computer and we dump everything we know about the circumstances and situation we're in on the screen. I'm 66 years old. Almost all the solutions to the circumstances that I've had in my life come from off screen. They don't come from the resolution that I, you know, so I'm sitting here with just my share of just only what I see. You know, I'm old enough now that I should figure out first of all there's a lot I don't see and there's a lot of stuff I see that isn't. And then I've got to figure out something that As they say, most of the solution with your children, with your spouse, with your situation, something happens that you never even considered. And it comes in. And so I'm just – I think there's a – I have a tendency in All Colleagues Anonymous to rely on what I know. And that's, I think, shortchanging myself. I mean, because I got an answer. I got and answer for almost everything. You can give me a multiple-choice test. I can tell you what to do or I can, you know. And I don't think the advice would be all that bad, but I think that's busy work. I think the piece that I'm really looking for is what Sandy talked about, is to be okay with what's around me, be in front of life on life's terms, to be able to be in from of that. And somehow, if not have the confidence, I don't know if confidence is the right word, or trust is the right word. But I think that's what we have. My dear friend Frank showed up unexpectedly to surprise me with a joyful event that was. And I think when you get together with old friends, and I feel the same way with Sandy and other people in this room, and you talk, we all have a sense for each other that it's going to be okay. We sometimes don't have it for ourselves. And that's one of the things that good friends who I've walked this walk with in the program give me. Just being by them encourages me to have a sense it's going to be okay. Sixty-six years old, have you ever had anything that hasn't turned out? No, but this one might not. And so that isn't exactly in the subject of surrender, but it is. I think I and we rely entirely too much on what we know, even what we knew about the steps, even what we know about the program, and not enough on. I think it was easier for us to say in 1950 or 1960 or 1970 that I don't know what's going to happen. I don' t know. We'll see. Today, I think there's a much stronger tendency that we've got to somehow figure that out. Can you make any sense of it? Yes, of course. I'm done talking. Thank you. Before I get started on that, I'm going to share something that happened to me recently. and I want to do it not to just cover this topic but to teach you a lesson because three people taught me a lesson listen to this and I wanna pass it on about 30 years ago I was up in Washington D.C. and on the local television an Afro-American lady was being interviewed by the TV guy and her son had just been murdered by another teenager and her son was just an innocent bystander so the TV guy wanted to get her while she was all upset so he'd have a good show and he said, how do you feel about the boy that did it? And she said, I've already forgiven him and I couldn't believe my ears I just I looked at her and she was as calm as a cucumber and just repeated it, that I've already forgiven him. And the TV guy didn't know where to go with that. He was stuck. And he just bemumbled something and went off. And then about, I don't know, 15 years ago, there was a lady in AA who had the same thing happen. And the first thing she said was, I've Already Forgiven Him. And And the third one was the Amish, and that was on TV. And these murders took place, and they went over – the family of the murdered child went over to the family where the son did the killing to see if they could comfort him. This raised my sights way up, and I used to talk about these three things to my friends. I said, do you remember this? Do you remember that? Because it just stuck with me like I can't believe that. But it became part of me. And I don't know why I'm crying now, but many of you know last month my youngest daughter was murdered in her home up in Connecticut. it. And so I suddenly had the same situation that my teachers had happened to them. And I'm here just to tell you what happened. My other daughter who found the body called me up and she said, are you sitting down, Dad? And I said, yeah. She said, well, Barbie was murdered this morning. And I saw these people. And before she finished telling me about it, I had completely accepted it and had forgiven whoever did it and when I say completely accepted I said as of this second in time my relationship with my daughter Barbie is on a new level the new relationship will consist solely of memories and stories so that I'll take all my pleasure in telling you all about her and she was in AA and she had five years and I spoke at a conference that she was the chairman of so I have from that second forward a whole new relationship and I don't care who did it it's none of my business that's up to the law authorities I don't have a stake in that at all. It's not part of it. Because of those teachers, I am not dealing with anger. I'm not dealing with resentment and I'm Not Dealing With Hatred. I'm dealing with sorrow which is the only thing God asks us to deal with in situations like that. Sorrow. Sorrow is easy compared to anger resentment and hatred and the anger, resentment and hatred come from the ego it shouldn't have happened. Why did it happen to me? I don't know. I got to get even. And all of that and the amount of suffering that those three cause are gigantic compared to sorrow because God helps us with sorrow and he won't help us with hatred he said you want to get rid of hatred? Forgive you want to get rid of resentment accept just embrace it this happened so he gives us the tools to get read of those and then he'll help us with sorrow and I'm so grateful for those teachers that I just saw so I'm just telling you that's what happened to me and it's a very powerful thing it's unbelievable because when you do it in the second that it happens you don't give the ego a toe hold to develop resentment or hatred or anger because once they get in the door they are going to be there because once that happened I started hearing from around the country and one guy called and told me he said I stayed angry for 12 years that is a terrible sentence to inflict on yourself I stayed angry for 12 years. That's just crazy. And so the tools are here to handle situations of a very high magnitude if we're willing to do that. In other words, in order to be willing to doing this, you have to let the universe off the hook. You have to say to the universe, okay, it's okay that that happened. You can't go, that shouldn't have happened. I can't believe it all went wrong. and it had no effect on my relationship with a loving God. It didn't change it at all. It made me more grateful that I had this loving God to help us through everything. He has nothing to do with what this happens or doesn't happen or any of those things. And so from now on, I'll just show you a picture of her and I at the convention and I'll tell you about all the good work. They had a memorial ceremony, 50 family members, 300 AAs. And the place was celebrating, and everybody was alive with the life that this young woman did. So I just wanted to get that in because there's such a big lesson in there. You have to remember that if you do it in the second that it's happening, you eliminate having to deal with resentment and anger. Those are the killers. And so it says acceptance is the key to everything. Forgiveness, how many times does Bill write about forgiveness in the prayer of St. Francis? It is if we ever forgave everything that ever happened to us in our life, we would have a very light burden that we're carrying around because we remember stuff and we're not going to let it go off the hook. I remember my sponsor tricked me one day years ago. guy had done something and I hate him, I hate him, and he said, well can you ever imagine like years from now letting it go and forgiving? Oh yeah. Well then why not do it now? So if you're holding on to something why not let it go now? Then you're the one that gets out of jail. Anyway let me pass it back to Bob. I just wanted to get that off. A month or so ago, when you said those words to me over the telephone when we were talking, the first thing that came to mind is our spiritual life is not a theory. You know, it is real, and it's really powerful. In addition to being powerful, it makes my problems look like chicken crap, I don't know if he intended that because I was doing really well focusing on my problem I'm having trouble remembering what it was but isn't that true that therein lies the dilemma of life I've got a little business issue that I have painted on my eyeball and at times it's all I can see and then regularly in meetings we are presented with something that breaks through all of it you just see it in little pieces you see it in the hallway of the hotel you see it one of the women at the meeting sharing something that's very powerful and we get to see the power of God. We get to sea the grace. We get to see how the program works. The ability to be with life, in life as it is with all the texture that it is. And to be okay. To be where our feet are. And to have it, to be in the now. To be present. All the great spiritual writers, when we're present, when we'll be in the past, when it will be in the future, most of us have a tendency to be fleeing from the past because it isn't the way we need it to be. Towards an imaginary future which will give us resolution, to an imaginary person which will give us resolution and relationship. and we're wasting the moment that we can attend to. That's one of our slogans about one day at a time, and if you could break that down to a moment at a timer, now is the time. There's just never a problem now. And when Sandy was talking, I bet if I would have been able to measure everybody in the room, none of us would have had a problem. you know, two hours from now, many of us will be back focused on our little universe doing that. And that is the sort of thing I really love when I was talking before, and I don't know how well I did it, but I said how unusual it is. I think the grace in AA is that we are forced to have a real relationship with the God of our understanding, not a hypothetical one, not one based on theology, not one based belief. But because in AA we only will listen to conversations that are real conversations, that you're really involved in. When we're talking about sharing your experience, strength and hope we don't want a second hand story. We don't you telling us about what your brother thinks or did or what your sister thinks or did. We want you to communicate what you're doing and not just from the neck up. How we listen will be probably determined by how you are in the sharing and as long as it's real, as long it is yours, and as it has integrity, we'll listen to it pretty well judgment-free. And if we don't agree with it, we just let it it go through and if we do agree with it it may wash over us like a warm bath and we get to do that hundreds of times a year we get to walk into our meetings with brothers and sisters in AA and talk about life and how we're living it and how it's working and how its not working and to talk about it in the context of spiritual principles which have been given on the program and to be in a room of people who while we're not maybe close socially everybody in that room wants your life to be good that is not a small deal I mean I don't know where else you can go in the world to truly be able to sit, which I think churches I think we all usually hold goodwill for each other but I do think it's amazing to sit in a room with people who have all had a spiritual experience, and if they were to try to describe it, wouldn't be able to. And the closer they got, their experience would be very different and very scattered. And yet everybody in the room, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, would have had, if you would have just walked up and said, if you had a spiritual, you know, if they could say it in a private place, they'd have their spiritual experience. There's no doubt about that. I mean that go to a bus and ask that question I mean it is the privilege that we have the environment that we have been offered for the support of our maintaining our spiritual condition is extraordinary to be able to hear what Sandy just shared is extraordinary and it helps me. Thanks, buddy. I'm going to pick up a sentence in the big book that I think is kind of fun to think about. We read it a lot and I don't know if we take it as seriously as we should and the sentence is our problems, we think, are of our own making and it appears somewhere else and I can't recall exactly but it ends up saying our problems are of our own making so if you have a problem, do you believe you made it? Is that how you officially recorded it in your head? Or have you got one that someone else made? But it doesn't say that It doesn't say our problems are sometimes of our own making and sometimes made by other people. And so suppose we believe that. Suppose we really believe that and said, all the problems I have, I made. I created. How do you create a problem? There's some building material to make a problem, and it's called thinking. All problems are built out of thought. And then, if you get good enough thoughts, your emotions get involved because they react to the thought. I just had the most horrible thing ever happen in the world to me. Now you're going to get emotional reaction to that. And then you find out, well what was it? They were out of bubble gum. I had to settle for a candy bar. Oh my God, that is awful. You know who an alcoholic caused when he had the flat tire? Suicide prevention. that's exactly what I'm talking about that we create our own misery when they say misery is optional that's what they mean they mean you have to create it And it's created, oddly enough, if you really look at it, it's creative with adjectives. In other words, life happens and then we put adjectives on them. Rotten, awful, disgusting, blah, blah. But it didn't come out that way. It rained this afternoon. The farmers all happy, I was going to play golf. And that's when that miserable rotten rain came down. Now I'm reacting to my thoughts about miserable rotten and how it ruined my afternoon, and now I'm furious. And if I do it well enough, I can go get a drink because anyone would drink with a problem that big. How big? The one I made. When I make a problem, it is really big, and it can't be fixed. There's no sense talking to a sponsor because he'll just try and talk me out of it. This problem is big and big. How did it get up there? To that level, I cooked it. Put it in the oven. Put some resentment and anger and all that. So when we say our problems are of our own making, you really have to believe them. How did I trick myself into getting so upset? How did i trick myself in to getting so Upset? Use those things and then trick yourself into feeling better. I've done that a lot. I just start thinking all these other things and then I just go, hey, there's a meeting tonight or I'm coming here, I'm going to see Bob. That's going to be a lot of fun. Okay, yeah, I do feel better. Yeah, but you just tricked yourself into feeling better. Well, I tricked myself into feeling bad in the first place. That's what I did. I tricked my ego into feeling good. I tricked it into feeling bad because the ego likes trouble. Its whole life depends on problems. That's where it gets its identity. That's what gets its separation from God. Otherwise, we'd be just a happy little child of God, which is all we actually are. And we want to be more than that. I'm a happy, little child of God and... And then we start adding all these other things on top of it, which is why anonymity and humility are so powerful. They bring us down to where events simply happen. They're not good. They're no bad. those labels that we have to put on them. So when I sponsor people and they have a problem, I say, come on over. And they think we're going to talk about the problem and we're not. I'm going to convince them they don't have a problem. And we're going to sit there looking at it differently until they finally go, well, yeah, if you look at it that way. And I said, that's the way you want to look at him. So the problems are that we're seeing it wrong. We have the wrong glasses on. That's why Chuck got that wonderful book, New Pair of Glasses. When you put those on, you don't have a problem. And I don't think that could happen. I think that's impossible, that there's some power in here. You put these glasses on, problems go away. Well, we are the last class of people who ever ought to think that way because what happened on the third drink when you went into a bar to your problems? It went away. Gone. And you just looked around and said, now this is more like it. This is more like it, I like this world. So we already know about a power that can cause us to see that there aren't any problems. And so that's why I like that sentence. Our problems are our own making. Okay, Mr. B? Well, if you look at it that way, I think mine's different, but But I don't think it's entirely of my own making. Yeah, there of her own making It's funny when you talk I have nothing to say Well, you get a new topic Oh, I like the one we were on Just that you resolved it And is it here anymore? We're going to take a 10-minute break. Then we'll come back and we'll do our 20 minutes, and then we'll go on to the next one. And then we will do questions and question and answer. Thank you. Am I on? I'm not there it is I'm not on now you are you don't know how much fun it is to be with my buddy here I just look forward to it so anyway he said that I have to come up with another topic so I'll come up with a topic that whenever I look at Bob I can't help but think of his topic laughter laughter laughter can I leave the room laughter the topic is humility laughter I thought I'd spend a little time talking about it the reason is that