Steve B. at the Steps 4 to 9 Road to Recovery – 2004

Hi, Icelandic people. Ah! What a trip. I'm Steve. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Steve. Wow, wow, wow. Continue dining up there. It's fine. And, uh-oh. Have I already messed up? Hector had the lights fixed, so... When Hector comes back, I think he went shopping. We're going to all turn and look at him. Okay? Because he's never late. And if you were late, he'd tell you. So we'll look at him. Because I'm a spiritual guy and I don't really like to rub people's faces in anything. You know, and I'm sure here in Iceland you all are spiritual giants too. Being that you're all descendants of Vikings. Yeah, I like the Vikings because I think they had the first really recovery program for alcoholism. It was a one-step program. They got drunk and in the morning when they were hungover, they went and killed somebody. You know? That's the way they stopped feeling bad. let's go kill somebody and burn it down I like that idea so I just want to thank everybody has been thanked I'm not going to thank the same people who have been thanked I'm going to think all the people who have a kh and a gr in their name because you know none of the English speakers have said a kh or a gr name have you noticed we can do those and it was great being introduced because I had no idea what she was saying about me here's an idiot from the states we don't know why he's here please be nice he has no idea what I'm saying smile at him he'll think we like him so it's great you know I have no idea what's going on I just go where people push me this has been just terrific and I think you could get more tourists if we just changed the name of this place Viking Land or Viking World or something then they'd come because you'd all have to drink because you live in the cold version of Disney World, and that would be bad. So anyway, we're going to get back to this. Now, I just want to, I'm sober in 1979. That was May 25th, 1979 is when I got sober. Jimmy Carter was president. And Hector and I got sober in the same year. He's like 20 days or 18 days in front of me. I'm actually the baby here this weekend. And And I like that. I'm one of those people that believes there's no such thing as too much attention. Those of you who go, I don't like to speak, I don'T understand you, why not? It's up 45 minutes about me. My favorite subject. And you all have to listen or die with a big fat liver out to here, you know? and I'll take your attention if you don't want it but what I wanted to say was and Hector sort of touched on it one of the things I believe is you don' t have to believe in this stuff my friend Marie Stenner who passed away used to say that I don't know if you get this reference but the steps are like X-LAC You know what exlax is? Exlax is when you're constipated. You're no constipate, huh? Okay. So you take exlax and it makes you unconstipated, right? And she would say it's like exlax. You don't have to believe exlaxis is going to work. You don'T even have to want exlax to work All you have to do is take exlex and it will work And the same thing is true about my experiences The same thing as true about the steps we spend a lot of time and we have things like this workshops, and it's all good. Look, this in my opinion is geared to do one thing, which is what AA is one alcoholic talking to another and if coming to this conference gets your blood up and it gets you more excited or if you learn something that helps you and I hope you do, then that's great but it's also geared towards meetings, geared towards one alcoholic talking to the other That is, in my opinion, what it's all geared toward. So to a certain extent, I think we all come from this from different places. And you're going to put your different spin on meetings. And I was in California for 22 years. I now live in New York. The program's the same, but some of the traditions, not the 12 traditions, but the way meetings are run are a little different. But it's the Same Program. And I would tell you that 99.9% of what Hector said this morning, I absolutely agree with. and I can focus on that one point that I don't, if I want to but there's not going to be anything new there's nothing new in this book Hector talked about it there's no such thing in my opinion as new spiritual truth humankind has known spiritual truth since the beginning of humankind don't steal everybody's always known that don't mess with another guy's wife it's not good don't lie unless you're telling a story then that's okay. Around the campfire, you can tell me how many reindeer you killed. It's 30. That's all right. The ice was up to here last year, you know? Okay, that's okay. You can exaggerate a little bit in the story, but when you're paying me for my lunch, don't tell me that's a 50 when it's a 20. So Bill Wilson, I think his brilliance was that, and he did, I don't know if you've ever read Varieties of Religious Experience, which was a book that influenced Bill. But I read that when I had five years sober and I had a hard time understanding it. Bill read it while he was detoxing. And got something out of it. And so what I think his brilliance was, and if he was divinely inspired, this book saved my life. The book, the program, the thing the book started, the thing that keeps going, because this is sort of the base saved my life, but I don't know that this book is divinely inspired and I don' t know that because the book doesn' t claim it most books that are divinely inspired or think they are, claim it the Bible, God wrote this book if you change it, he'll burn your face off you know okay the Koran, you can't even make a movie about the Korans, you know they'll come get you the Bhagavad Gita, God wrote the book, Bill Wilson never claims that God divinely inspired him. Because, but I believe there's divinely inspired material in here because Bill stole it from other people. Everything in here, it's a great alcoholic book. It's all stolen. Which is exactly the way our spirituality should be. And if you're Buddhist, you recognize this. If you grew up in a Christian, you recognize it. In fact, in the 60s when the Buddhists started coming into the program, Bill was really surprised it worked for them because this book is so heavily based on grace, and Buddhism is a religion without grace. And yet it's been able to be tweaked. It's such an American book. It is. The spearhead of God's ever-advancing creation. That is like such an American phrase, you know. He obviously wrote that before Auschwitz, you know what I'm saying? So Bill was. He was a kinetic Yankee and a total optimist when he wasn't depressed. You know, he's like, everything's great, great! I can't get up. In fact, I live right near Bill's house. I was doing guided tours when I moved to New York before I had to go back to work. See, Bill had the right idea for a male alcoholic. He was self-supporting through his wife's contributions for years. I think that's the way it should be today. No, I never knew that a woman would buy you a car or apartment or clothes until I got sober. And then I started sponsoring guys that they did that for. Because I was always taught you pay for everything, you know? A gentleman pays for everything. How'd you do that? Well, you don't eat for a couple days. You just look like I'm at a puppy dog. Take care of me. Take me home. I'll be faithful this time. Anyway. But I believe that this is divinely inspired because there's a divinely inspired literature in it, and it is divinally inspired as any good literature is. Martin Luther King's Letters from a Birmingham Jail, divinely inspired. Because it's good stuff. It is good stuff! So wherever you come down with this thing, the bottom line, and that's just where I'm, you know what? Next week I could have a different opinion. That's the one I've had for a while. I don't have the same opinion I had at five years, at ten years, thank God I never wrote anything, because somebody would come up and go, I really agree with this, and I wrote it like 15 years ago, and then go, well I don' t anymore. I gave that up a long time ago. And they're going, well, it saved my life. You can't... I haven't been able to stay in the same place spiritually. I've dumped ideas, gone back to them, and it's just a lot of fun. And I've got to tell you it's a lot of fun because I had to start with the fourth step. Fourth step's not usually a step most people think of as fun. Fourth step! Fourth step, I was thinking about that this morning. Four-step is a little bit like sex before you've had it. You know, you hear a lot about it. You hear an awful lot about it. And it sounds kind of scary, you know? You do what? With whom? When? And then after you've had it, you have one or two reactions. It's like, boy, I want to do that more! Or what was all the fuss about? That's more the women. What was all the fuss about? That's only if they had sex with a man. But what I was saying, well, today you never know. It's really changed today. Today, you know, one of the worst things when I was growing up is somebody would say, you throw a ball like a girl. Today, if a girl says you do that like a girl, it's a compliment. But what I was saying... That'll sink in later. And for those of you who English is not the... They'll explain it to you. So anyway, the fourth step. It's really a lot of fun. And after you do it, I promise you'll go, What was the big deal? What was I so scared about? I mean, unless you're really tweaked and sick. And I just want to say something to the young people here. You know, if you're Really Young, like last night Debbie was 18. And when you're 18, you go into meetings and they go, oh, you're so lucky. You're so young. You came in. I wish I'd come in when I was young. You have so much ahead of you. You are so young No, you are not. You were a loser. You are just a big loser. You couldn't stay out there that long. That's the problem. 21, 23, you were done. What a wuss. She was done at 18. Come on, what kind of alcoholism is that? didn't go on for 30 or 40 years. Come on! Did it in six. What a loser! There's a whole section in AA for young people, Losers Anonymous, you know? But I'll tell you what I really believe. There are no young people in AA. Nobody comes into Alcoholics Anonymous young. You get young here. I've seen 16-year-olds come in who are 80, and I've seen 80-year olds become 16 by being here. So you don't come here if you're young. You're still out there doing the deal. So the fourth step, it's great. Now remember, if I just go back to the third for a minute, it says right after the third that this is an important step. And I'm not going to quote right from the book, you know, for you following. And I learned that the Icelandic books pages aren't the same as ours. So, you No, I'm not going to give you any page numbers because it will just confuse you. But it says that the third step is important, but it's only going to be important if we follow it immediately, that word immediately, by rigorous action, which means doing the fourth. Now, look, I came in here, I didn't have to write down. And this is just the difference between Hector and I. The other difference between Hector and I is I'm a lawyer. I'm wearing underwear. And I'm 25 years sober too. And the great thing I like about telling you I'm not wearing any underwear is you're never going to know whether it's true or not. Only I know if that's true. So, and that's a lie. See, sometimes you'll hear an AA, they don't ever tell you a lie? That's a lying. They will lie to you. In my experience, people with time will lie to you if they think it'll keep you sober one day. I lie to people all the time. People say, I watch them and I go, how much time you got? Like 60 days. I go, great! 90 days you get a gift. I do? Yeah. We send it right to your house. Well, how do you know my address? We know. Because you really want to mess with their paranoia a little bit, you know? Because newcomers come in here driving a 1972 Hyundai and will go what do you want from me? They've got a bad attitude and no money and they go, they want something from me. Yeah, we want that car you're driving. It's really cool. So, and then they'll come up to me after like, you know, 89 days and go, where's my gift? And I go, oh, it's like 120 days now. We've made that. And I'll play that game until like six months and they'll go, I know what the gift is, Steve. I know it's sobriety, isn't it? And I'd go, yeah, that's it. That's the gift. Guy will call me four o'clock in the morning. Now she broke his heart 9 p.m. He can't call me at 9 p.m. At 9 p., he's going to get through it with God, the big book, and himself. 4 p. m., And I'll go, read page 27. I don't know what's on 27. Have no idea what's on 27 just came to my mind 10 minutes later thank you steve 27 saved my life so i gotta read 27 figure out what i said because i'll probably get some attention from that so so the fourth step this fourth step you know it's brilliant now look I I come out of a faith tradition that when it broke away from the catholic church believed that good doctrine would solve all our problems if you did it the right way then everybody was going to be cool. And, you know, the problem is that you've got to have structure, but you've also got to have the experience. This is a book about someone's experience. And so if I don't have both of those things going on, now when I came in here what I was starting to say is I didn't need to write anything about being powerless. I knew I was alcoholic. I don'T understand why any of you are here that don't know you're an alcoholic. I DON'T understand why people come to AA that don't know they're alcoholic. But they do, and that's great. I don't care why. You know, I don' t care why you're here today. I'm a person who believes that one day of sobriety is better than no days of sobrietty. I believe being here is better than not being here. And here he is now, Mr. Hector Elias. Everybody let's give him a hand. Yes! He's making his entrance. He got the sweater. He got the sweater, and I just want to, when he's a spiritual speaker, I want you to know he was late for my talk, so he could go get a sweater, and I knew that's where he was. Every time you wear that sweater, you're going to think of me alone in here with all the Icelandic people without my American friends. Okay, so... So now look, there's a number of ways to take an inventory. We're not the only group that took an inventory, Hector taught, you know, religious people take inventories all the time. I only do the invidory the way it's out of the big book that's just for me and I'll tell you why it's magic and I don't know how it works why it works I'm not sure where this format came from I'm also not sure I'm even convinced it's the way Bill Wilson did it the first time in fact there's some historical evidence that suggests Bill Wilson didn't take a real inventory until the 40s when he met Father Ed I don't care all I know is every time I do it I find out more than I think I'm going to find out and it's truly a brilliant inventory now, I understand that what you guys call what we call big book thumpers you guys called the Taliban and I'm gonna steal that take it back to New York and I am not giving you any credit for it I'm not going to say in Iceland I found out, I'm just going to use it like I thought it up because I'll get more attention that way if I give you credit you'll get some attention which means less for me see how that works so this brilliant thing it starts out with who who am I angry at Who? Them. They. Those. All of you. The world. I'm pissed off. And I start realizing how angry I am. I know I'm angry, but I don't start realizing until I write it down. And this is the first thing I ever wrote. I didn't have to write about being powerless. I didn' t have to right about being unmanageable. I knew that. I hung out at a couple meetings. I knew there was a power greater than myself. You guys were sober. I wasn't. had no idea of what a higher power was but I turned my will and my life over the care of the work and I found a God of my own understanding you do not have to believe in anything but doing the fourth step after you finish the third if that's all, in my experience if that is all you turn your will and your life over to the care of, the fourth steps, the fifth steps the sixth steps, and a sponsor and don't worry about it, newcomers always say well I do a bad fourth step if you do a good fourth step, it's not your fault it's your sponsor's fault you don't know how to do a fourth step do you the sponsor's the one who knows. I control the way it's done. And if I can control that, because I know how to do one. Simple. I don't want a biography. A guy brought me a biography and was very offended when I said, I can't do a four-step with that. I turned him on to a priest that listened to it. It's about four hours. I Don't Believe in Four-Hour Inventories. If you need to do One, that's great. But it says the exact nature singular of our wrongs plural. I don't need to hear how many times you slept with your sister-in-law. It's the same story. After I hear it a couple of times, okay, we know what that character defect is. Let's move on. Marie used to say in the sexual part of the inventory, it says, and what could we have done different? And she says the answer to that's always the same. Read a book. Kept our pants on. It's not rocket science here. So who? And I start writing, and I am. I like people individually I don't like you in a group I don' t like you at the elevator I really think many times at the elevators you need to die because you know the elevator button you push the elevator and it's connected to a circuit so once you push it, it's set you don't need to push it anymore but some of you stand at the elevator and keep doing this and I think I need to kill you because of that I think you need to die because you're so stupid we need to get you out of the human gene pool on airplanes you get on airplanes your seat is 37A you go to the first row and you look up like it might be 37A the first row okay i'm a spiritual giant i'm going to give you that one because maybe the architect made a plane where 37a is the first draw maybe it could happen i'm gonna give you that one but no you know what it's one that's what it says it says number one what a surprise so let's move it buddy but you don't move it you go to the next row and look up again thinking it goes from 1 to 37a i need you and your family here so i can kill you all okay i need to do an inventory see what i'm convinced is the difference between us and the regular people and i don't know if you have this here but sometimes alcoholics will get on a spiritual hilltop and go those normies those earth people we have to feel sorry for them because they don't have a program. You know why they don't have a program? They don't need a program, okay? They don'T need to do the steps. Somebody told them when they were little there's a God that loves you more than anything else and they went I'll take it. We didn't. We went no I'm going to throw up for a while, ruin my life and then I'll find God, okay. No thank you. I don't want to do it the easy way. I want to spend my money and have some. That's the way I want things to go. See, I want the cake and no calories. I didn't come to AA to stop drinking. I came to AA to give up the consequences of drinking. See? Now, I learned I had to stop drinking to give up the circumstances, but that wasn't my original plan. See, I put my hand on the stove and I go, God, it's hot! This is usually in the relationship area. God, it's not hot! It's hot, make the pain stop! And God goes, take your hand off the stove. And I go, isn't there another way? Because you know what? If you want to be a guru in AA, it is like the simplest thing in the world. This is not the Mensa Club. This is Alcoholics Anonymous. Here's how you're a guru. Somebody comes up to you and goes, she breaks my heart and she sleeps with my best friends and then she comes home after she does cocaine and she crashes into my house and spends all my money. What should I do? And you as the sponsor and the spiritual giant you are say something very deep like, why don't you break up with her and don't see her anymore and they go wow I can do that whoa you're so zen man you know so it's not tough to be a guru around here the bar is not very high so Alcoholics Anonymous us come on that's what it is you know i i really i i object you know who was it kissinger said we're the greatest moment in the movement in the 20th century it's like don't say that maybe we are maybe we aren't i don't know you know world war ii that was a kind of a movement maybe but but don't tell us that we'll think we're somebody you know rather than this little dinky spiritual movement that keeps you from dying from alcoholism which is a strange thing because there aren't many diseases like ours i mean like you know there's people who eat strawberries and they bust out in hives from strawberries there's no strawberry anonymous there's no places where people who bust out and hive some strawberries go and go yeah i haven't had a strawberry in 25 years and newcomers come up to him and go you haven't had a strawberry in 25 years wow do you ever want strawberries every goddamn day i want a strawberry i want of strawberry batter and you taste it how do you not eat it grace of god grace of God and working with others in the 12 steps and good sponsorship that's how I keep away from those strawberries one day at a time one day out of time and I'm grateful damn it I am grateful I don't have to eat a strawberry and breath and I it's all because of the 12 Steps and God I found in these rooms they don't know they just stop eating strawberries you know it's us it's US the best uh best uh The story I've heard about alcoholism was that alcoholism is like, outside this door there's a guy and he's 220 pounds of muscle. And he's got a baseball bat. And you walk out that door and he beats the hell out of you. Now, a normal person might walk out there once, get beaten up and they're going to go out the back door. A mentally challenged person might go out that door once or twice, then they're gonna go out to back door An alcoholic will go out that door day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year and let that guy beat the hell out of them. And then one day you go out there and he's not there so you sit down and wait for him. Alcoholism, right? And alcoholism doesn't have anything to do with being... You know, Alan McGinnis who was a guy in LA that died before I got sober, I feel like is one of my sponsors. He said one of the things he had to get over before he could get sober was that sobriety is not a virtue. You don't get it because you're good, and you didn't get alcoholism because you are bad. Self-centered doesn't necessarily mean bad. It just means centered in self rather than centered in where I am determined. I believe I am supposed to be God. It's just the state I was in, and I didn't even know I was on it. Now, I'm an extreme example, but not a unique one. We alcoholics, we will take any attention. yeah I'm an extreme example of selfishness and self-centeredness yeah but not a unique one it doesn't even say the most extreme there was a little German non-alcoholic corporal vegetarian who was more extreme self-centred than any of us I mean you've got to own a country to be really self- centred so who? I'm listing all these people and one of the differences between us and the normal people is that, you know, everybody comes to life with ideas. A lot of my ideas were based on the television shows I watched as a kid and I saw this idea of family and love and the way it's supposed to be and then you run into real life and it doesn't match up with your idea. And I think normal people go, oh, this is what I thought, this isthe way it is, okay, I'll do this. Us little pre-alcoholics we go, that's the way I thought it was, thisisthewayitis I'm really pissed off. And I'm going to stay that way for about 30 years really irritated that life wasn't the way I thought it would be. See? And that's why I'm mad. That's on my mad list. I got guys from high school. I got guy from grade school that I'm at. And then it goes, what did they do? What did they that made me mad? And I'm right. It's a great step so far. I don't know why anybody would judge. Who them? They. What'd they do. They didn't love me. They didn' t do that. What is it affects? Everything. everything and i'm going this is great too my personal relationships my sexual relationships my pocketbook you know you're going down that list it's a four bagger it's three bagger it's all of them it's not one of them and the fact is all of a sudden i start going wow other people really have the ability to affect me which i didn't like so much because as an alcoholic i think i am a rock i am an island just me and my bottle and i am fine You have no effect on me. And then I realized people owned me. I was given away a lot of stuff. You know, you could just say hi and not go hi, but just hi. And I was depressed. Self-esteem, personal relationship. So all of a sudden I'm seeing you guys really affect me and I don't like you. So I don'T like that you have that much effect on me. And then we get to where am I in this? Now, this is what I think is really hard for me to get across to some of the guys I sponsor. This isn't what I had to do in the action. I may never have had anything to do in the reaction. Sister Mary of perpetual pain may have locked me in my room and beat the hell out of me when I was a kid. I don't have any part in that. That's her problem. My part is, I'm still pissed off about it 30 years later. See, it's what is my part in the resentment? Am I keeping the resentment because I'm selfish, dishonest, self-seeking or frightened? Right? Not. What did I? No, I may have a part. I slept with my sister-in-law, I spent all her money, I killed a chihuahua. I mean, I might have had a part there. But there may be very many things that I resent that I'm not guilty of anything except for still resenting them, they, those, years later. In fact, I'll tell you what happened to me. I'm on the internet. I feel sorry for you newcomers doing the ninth step now because now you can get in touch with everybody. There is no excuse not to make an amend to anybody. The little kids you picked on in second grade or whatever the equivalent here is, you've got to call them. So I'm on my old high school website, and the name of the guy that used to kick my butt every day pops up. And it really irritates me that he is like the guy who connects with people and does golf tours, and he's this really good guy now when he was a racist redneck jerk that kicked my butt everyday in school. and before I know it, now this was a year ago I have typed off a letter, you racist redneck I can't believe you're doing this, this is the guy you used to kick I hope your life sucks and I sent it I didn't call my sponsor you know what, I would have told you I didn's called my sponsor because I knew what my sponsor would say and I didn' want to hear the answer but I didn''t even think that much something inside me wrote it before I knew I wrote it and I sent it. Here's God working in your life. The next day I read my email, it got sent back. Undeliverable. Undeliverable. Now it goes on my steps. See, God doing for me what I couldn't do for myself at that moment. But, you know, it's like, why have I still got that resentment? And I didn't even know I had it until I saw his name. So it goes on the list. Who? What? And what am I being selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? And here I'll tell you where the Taliban gets a little off because, you now, I'm a big book A. I'm a big book. But you know what? And this is one of the things I think that it's human nature. The automobile used to be very simple, now it's run by computers. Everything goes from simple to more complex. And the program has gone that way. When I got sober there were only four character defects. Selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened. That's the only four character defects that are in this book. But I know many big book alcoholics who will do a four step workshop and they got 150 character defects, playing God, being dead and you know what, I don't have any problem with that if that works for you and if that helps you I'm all for it, go do it what I like about four character defects is it's simple and what I need my life out there is complex and here I like simple am I being selfish, dishonest, self-seeking or frightened selfish mine all mine I don' t know what they are but you can't have one because they're all mine selfish self-seeking all right i'm going to give you one but there will come a day when i will ask a favor of you see i'm gonna give you one but there's a string attached to it usually the string is would you like to go somewhere and you go no and i go after all i've done for you see i never gave away nothing for free there was always something in it for me so self-seeking even when I'm giving I'm trying to get something back dishonest I thought that was used to be lying you know no I wasn't there I know you have videotape of me and her in the bed but it wasn't me I wasn'T there no no no because we know we can drive people crazy if we deny long enough they believe us maybe you weren't there maybe I got these herpes in the bathroom maybe that's maybe that'S true I mean we do one of the worst things I think we do is screw with people's reality because we're so powerful when we need to drink and keep our world intact we will make them think two and two equals five and then the next day it's seven and the next day it is four and they go crazy living with us because they are straight. We are intoxicated trying to make two and twos equal seven. They are straight trying to believe it, especially the little ones. Especially the little one that don't know. They think you are telling them the truth. What I realized was dishonest is this is what my dishonesty was. You hurt my feelings and I never tell you. I never say, can we go talk about what happened over coffee and see if we... I just cut you off at the knees. You're dead alcoholic walking. I don't care if you put your hand up in my meeting. Oh, I just didn't see you. You know, I'm sorry. You are not coming to my parties. I am just going to freeze you out. You Are Dead To Me. See? And that's dishonest because I never give you a chance to explain or tell me or work through some problem we had. And I tell you what, you want to get rid of people in your life? Do that. Just don't give them a chance. Don't let them make mistakes. I told somebody today, never put an alcoholic, I don't care how much time they've got, up on a pedestal because there's no room to dance up there. See? And we, I am a fallible alcoholic. You can come into a meeting and tomorrow, you know, because I believe the best thing we get out of here is not recovered but human the thing I never wanted to be a human being okay and so you know selfish self-self is frightened what am I afraid of I read across because for me if I read a cross who what they did how it affected me what I'll know what I'm afraid of. I read it across there and it's usually afraid of them not enough I'm not allowed I don't know where I got this idea I just know it goes so deep down in the computer that it's been hard to get out completely and it just keeps coming up And I'll tell you one thing that's been different about my four steps on the resentment list. When I started out, it was all you. You, you, you. For a couple of years now, there's usually only two people on my resentment list, me and God. Me and God, because I don't like the way God runs his universe, to tell you the truth. I think he screwed up a lot of things. I mean, if everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be, God's nuts. I don'T know about you. I think we could have just got rid of Ebola for that. Why do we need Ebola? I don't understand. Something that makes all of your internal organs liquefy? What was he thinking on the day he created that? We didn't create it, so he had to. It's all his football. It's his football, and you know what? I love people. Well, if God was this way, I couldn't accept him. You know what, if G-d looks like Stalin, he's still G-od. Doesn't matter. There's nobody else to choose. I gotta accept G-o-d the way he is as he reveals himself to me, not get him to accept me, because I'm going to have a God that says, step over to the bar, try a little drinking. If it doesn't work, you get to keep your sobriety. That's the kind of God I want. For God so loved the world, he gave Steve Bordner everything he wanted. You let me create a God. That is the kind OF God I am going to create. One that is about me. One THAT looks like me. ONE THAT sounds like me and has my same goals. And that is a problem, because what you call character defects were my life goals when I came into AA you know so and then we get into the the fear list and then I get to say about institutions and and all of these sorts of things I gets out of it just not resentments and I found out I'm afraid of the government you know what I found OUT I'm AFRAID OF EVERYTHING I'M AFRAid OF LIVING AFRAD OF DYING I'M FRIED I'M TOO MUCH I'M AFFRAID I'M NOT ENOUGH I DEPENDS LIKE IT'S ICELANDIC WEATHER What time is it? That's what I'm afraid of. And then we get into sexual inventory. Ooh. I have sponsored women. I don't sponsor anyone now. The last one I sponsored was a stripper, and it didn't work. It was... I thought I was spiritually fit enough, and I wasn't. Nothing happened, but I was just like, I'm not sponsoring women. I'm out. But I have sponsors some women, usually gay women, who have been hit on by other women, but I've never heard a fifth step for a woman not going to. I told them, I'll sponsor you, but I'm not listening to your fifth step. But I've heard a number of men's fifth steps. And you know what? I love it. The book lies. The book says, we treat sex like any other problem. Then it does six pages on it. It doesn't do six pages on anything else. It just does six stages on sex. That's not treating it like any another problem. Why? Because it's not like any other problem, is it? We all know that. And I love it because again, where did I raise jealousy bitterness and again what could I have done different what I've even added that column on my resentment calling now having a spiritual experience what if I could go back what would I do differently how I wouldn't cut them off in the freeway I wouldn'T flip them off you know I'd let him go in front of me there's any number of things and it's it's a wonderful now this is my experience and there's a guy who's a much better sponsor than me who says out of 10 four step inventories he gives out, probably one gets done. I believe that this four step is what separates a lot of people in this room actually doing it. Now once you finally get to it, you can do the first, second and third a number of ways. You can write some, you cannot write some whatever but when you get here you got it right and I'm not a person who really wants to find out a lot about themselves, because I'm afraid I'm not very much. So if I find that out, all my illusions are gone. You know, somebody asked, can the 12-step bring out mental illness? Hell yes. You stop drinking, you can find out if you're mentally ill. Stop drinking and get depressed? Yeah. What do you think you were drinking about? Because you're depressed. So you drink a depressant, which makes you more depressed, so you drink over getting depressed, of course. Stopped drinking? Now, You know, there are plenty of people. I'm one of those people. I stop drinking, I start feeling better. I know people, they stop drinking and they hear the voices because they drink not to hear the voice. So it all depends on where you come from. So that's why the doctor talks about there are so many alcoholics we could write a whole book about them. So many different kinds of alcoholics. So I've got this inventory. My experience is that nobody wants to write it, but once they do, they want to read it to you the minute they finish. I don't care if it's 3 o'clock in the morning. you have taken a year and a half to get them to write an inventory 3 o'clock in the morning, I'm done, you've got to listen to it because as soon as it's done they want to give it away now the pamphlet I would write or the piece of literature I would writing that I don't believe has ever been written and every time I bring this up in my group they'll go that's the stupidest idea Steve I've ever heard so I'm here vulnerable with you very nice Icelandic people who understand And I'm going to expose myself. Not that way. Okay, is this on the radio now? Okay, I don't want to scare anybody driving around. So this is what I would write. A pamphlet on how to hear a fifth step. Not how to here, but experience in hearing a fifth step. Because when we talk about the fifth step in meetings, we usually talk about our experience with our sponsor. But there's another experience we have. One of the greatest experiences in AA. Sitting down with a man, and we were talking about this at lunch, and having him tell you something he was going to the grave with. Having him tell you something nobody was ever going to know. Having Him tell you stuff His wife doesn't know and will never know because I ain't talking about it, you know? One of the greatest privileges I have is sitting across from a man doing their four-step and hearing them say some stuff that they knew if they said somebody would go, you are so disgusting I have to leave now and sitting with them and my experience no matter how bleak and horrible the story is is that I always end up loving that man more than I did before I knew what I knew about him everything he thinks that makes him unworthy unworthy of a God's grace and Hector said it this morning I don't get God's grâce because I'm worthy of it he doesn't love me because of being good or bad he loves me because of who he is and what's great about that is it takes all the performance out of it See, I need to be special to be okay. Do you understand that? If I'm okay, I'm not okay. I have to be especial to be Okay. And so one of my problems is I know God loves you, but I want him to love me a little bit more. See, this is King David and Steve Bordner. These are my guys right here. I love these guys. These are My buddies. I want to be right up under God's hairy armpit. And what ticks me off is God loves You as much as He loves Me, and I can't be special. Isn't that a great blessing? I can't be special, because I'm already special. I'm as special as you. My friend Kenny Bob in L.A. says, if you just think of God right now, if you're having a problem, think of how special he is. Think of God who's got his wallet out, and he's got your picture in there going, this is my kid. This is my only kid, and I love him to death. I'd do anything for that kid. That's my favorite child. And that's the kind of God that I found here. The kind of guy I had was not a punishing guy. I had the kind that Bill Wilson had. Just one that was off in the distance, not very interested. There was a God, but he just wasn't very interested, and he certainly wasn't very interested in my life. And I came into a program that has a God that is more obsessed with me than I am. Because somebody asked Hector in the earlier one questions, and please give questions. I'm going to rush through this because, and I had more steps than anybody else too. I want some sympathy for that. Hector did three, and Debbie did three. So I have to do six steps in the same hour and only if I was more spiritually advanced than them could I do it I would never go shopping at the break but as I was saying I'd stay right here let somebody else buy that red sweater I don't care, I'm a spiritual giant so sitting down and I'll tell you what happened with my sponsor I had told my sponsor basically everything that was on my inventory so when I sat down with the inventory I thought, hey this is going to be no problem but I haven't told him everything all at once and sitting down with that piece of paper realizing he was going to hear everything all at once, I thought he's just going to tell me to get out of here, he's going to leave, it was my house maybe he'd tell me to get off and I'm not like all that bad, I got minor traffic violations, you know I slept with a couple people I shouldn't have average, selfish and self-centered, that's all I am I didn't do any time in Folsom I'm not, you know, tatted out. I wasn't a big drug ribber and I wasn'T movie star. I just was a regular drunk. The Will Rogers of alcoholics, you know? And I sat down there and the same thing happened. He just loved me. And when I talk about listening, I don't think it matters again. You know, if you're going to do the fourth step with me, you're gonna do it out of the big book. But other people do it other ways. They do a biography. I can't do a biography because I would become the victim in a biography if I'M writing a biography, it's gonna be about what you did to me again, not my part. See, that fourth column was mind-shattering. It was, as they call it, a paradigm shift. Wow, I have some control of this. Because if I don't have any control, I've got to drink to get some control. That's why I'm different. When I drink, I feel like I'm in control. Non-alcoholics drink, they feel like they're out of control. But if I can kind of control it, maybe I don' t have to drink. I can control whether people get my resentments by what I do with my resentment. wow, what people do to me. I don't have to sign up to be a victim anymore. Earth-shaking news. Radical. And I tell you, I don�t know. I've heard all sorts of stories about people how to listen to Fifth Steps. I sit down there and listen, and we're pretty face-to-face, and it's pretty intimate, and I'll tell some stories. I mean, pretty common, but I know people say their sponsor cooked an omelet while they read their Fourth Step. Like, eh, that's not very important. Don't worry about it. Yeah, keep reading. We're getting in the car. Let's go, you know. And that works. I means, all sorts of things work but i tell you what i know what it's a good fifth fourth step a good fifth step is when the guy that's doing it goes i'm tired i'm tired when your own story makes you tired you've gotten somewhere you know so now fifth step so this is another place where the taliban has kind of changed since i got sober i always hear people in meetings go i'm working on the sixth step i'm working on i'm on my six i've been on my sixth for a month what what now don't get me wrong there is a sense in which we do these steps and I'm actually doing the fourth and I am doing the fifth and then but and there's another sense in where I'm doing the sixth step my whole life I'm continually becoming more willing I'm continuously humming that's absolutely true but if we're just talking about you finished a fifth step you don't have to be on the sixth step for months the book says we go home we take an hour we look at the we did we do good work. We ask God, we say the prayer, we've done with six and seven. Boom, you're out. It doesn't have to take long. And one of the things I think has changed about AA since I've been sober is now doing the steps takes forever. And you know what? That's okay. You do the steps, you do the steps. But I want to tell you this, you can have God right now. You can be finished with these steps tomorrow or the next day or in a week. Depends on how hard you want to work the next couple of hours. You don't have to do it so long. Dr. Bob made his amends on a day he had a beer. Like everything else, it's gone from simple to complex. It wasn't all that complex. You didn't take all that long. And so you go home and if you do it out of the book again, which is the way I do the sixth and the seventh step, you're done in an hour. Finished. Now, it's a lifelong process to continue to be willing to humbly ask, but you're done as far as the formal part's gone. Let me just say this about the sixth and the seventh. The sixth and the seventh are kind of weird, and the book that, you know, the 12 and 12 illuminates them a little bit, but they're kind of weird because they don't spend much time on them, and what happened was when we came out of the Oxford group, they had the four absolutes. Absolute honesty, absolute tolerance, absolute love, and absolute unselfishness, right? Absolute honesty, purity, unselflishness, and love. Okay? Absolutes. Hector was talking about these. Things that can't be argued with. And Bill Wilson realized you cannot give alcoholics absolutes. If you give an alcoholic an absolute, they'll do one of two things about it. They'll kill them trying to do it. You give it to a normal person, they go, oh, these are absolutes, something I'm supposed to grow to. You get to an alcoholic, something I's supposed to do by five o'clock this afternoon. I'm supposed to be absolutely honest, absolutely, you know, and if I'm not, I'm a loser. And so we'll try to do them, and if we don't do them We'll drink because we failed, or we'll look at them and go I never can do them and drink and never start And so he gave us these processes And he really screws us in the 12 and 12 Which he says that we have to march towards God's will for ourselves Knowing that we're never going to do it perfectly But we don'T get to decide when we stop That's screwy I know I can never do it but I have to march until God says I'm done. That's a horrible, horrible thing to put in an alcoholic like me who's black and white. Right? Wrong. Tell me no today rather than yes tomorrow. That's the kind of alcoholic I am. So that's the sixth and the seventh, and again, I continually humbly ask, and to go back to this morning, the sixths and the sevens say to me, I can't get rid of my character defects any more than I can get rid off my alcoholism. God has to change them and here's the problem he might not want to take some of yours he might benefit from some of ours he might you know you can't sleep so he might keep giving you insomnia so you go stay down at the club and talk to that newcomer he's got coming at three o'clock in the morning he might let you stay a little pissed off and angry so you have to keep calling your sponsor and talking about amends, so you call your sponsor on a regular basis. And one of my experiences with him is sometimes he doesn't take the character defect I want him to take the most. The one that I think makes me look bad, not spiritual. See? I have character defects I just think make me look badass. I don't want them removed for any other reason than I will look better to you, then I will get more attention. See, that's the only reason I want them removed. And God ain't, in my experience, He ain't removing them for that. And what I've learned, I learned it 22 years, is you know what? I may die with some of the character defects I came in with. It's none of my business. I have to be willing and humbly ask and then get on with it. And if I stay a hothead, which I can stay, you know, and I tell you what, I've given up things just like everybody else here. I just don't want the pain anymore. It's not I don't wanna run you off the road for the way you're driving. I just Don't Wanna Pay the Ticket. Don't wanna pay the ticket. Don't want to pay the ticket. No, no, no. Don't Want to Explode because I've made too many amends where I've had to make amends. I'm sorry for what I said the way I said it. Don't want to do that anymore. So, now, I am a Taliban big book AA, but I'm going to do something that is anathema to some Taliban. I'm gonna suggest that in the 12 and 12, it has a better way to do the eighth step than in the big book. Oh, oh, oh my God. did we actually hear him say that this book was written for money and it's not good I love the people who don't like the 12 and 12 because the same guy that wrote this book wrote this one God was talking to him through this one but here he didn't know his name or his address I'm done with you, you've got one book in you Bill that's it, this is crap all right? It's got the most brilliant definition of AA ever heard. The 12 steps are a set of principles, spiritual in nature, that if practiced as a way of life, expel the obsession to drink and allow the sufferer to live happily and usefully whole. That's what the 12 steps do in one sentence. It's the best sentence I know that describes the 12 Steps. But it's not bad in here, but there's just not much about the eighth step. In the 12 and 12, they talk about, and this is the way I do the eighth steps, and we go back to who again? Who did I harm? And I've got that sometimes from my list, and other people kind of, who did I harm, how did I harm them, what did I do? And then, how did I arm them, and what did i do, and how did i harm them? Did I harm them spiritually, mentally, emotionally or physically? and so I have to start thinking about how have I harmed and I've got to tell you what I believe if I harm you physically, I harm your spiritually if I arm you emotionally, I arm your spiritually I'm not one of these people who believe that there's something inside of you that I can't touch we make each other better or worse I am sober today because you thought I could get sober before I did and so when I walk in a room and think that big fat slob I honestly believe they feel it, they know it, and it affects them. And they go get another donut. I don't know that I'm that powerful, but I'm saying that I think, and when I go in and go, God, what a beautiful, lovely person, and I see the inside of that person and don't see the little earth suit that they're wearing, you know, that that has an effect. And I believe we push each other towards the light or towards the darkness. Because I found that here. You guys have pushed me to the light. And so when I harm you physically, emotionally, and spiritually, And that's a great, you know, somebody asked today, Hector, does God have a plan for you? And you know what? The 11th step says it does. Praying only for knowledge of his will. The 11st step, which is going to be talked about, is a radical step because it suggests that the creator of the universe has a specific will for your life. Maybe it's not true, but that's what the step believes. That's what people who wrote this book believe. You know, and I don't know about you, but one of Hector's favorite people is Sophia Loren, okay? You guys remember her, right? some of the younger people. Okay, she used to be really beautiful. She still is, but she was younger then. And anyway, if Sophia Loren was going to come to Hector's house, he'd be cleaning. He'd be, you know, he'd have the best food. And if you've ever been to Hactor's house it's gorgeous anyway. But it would even be Trey gorgeous. Okay? Just gorgeous gorgeous. And he would have everything set up. But you know God says they're coming to my house every, if I'll just get up out of bed and pray and meditate God will come talk to me in the morning. I'll go, I don't know. I got other things to do. Maybe I'll go to the gym and work on a body that's going to fall apart anyway. I don' t know. Maybe I got to think about me some. I dont' know. And I forget the sustainer, the creator of the universe has got a will for my life if I'll just listen and talk to him. It's an amazing thing. And Ill tell you sometimes why I don''t do the 11th step. Too intimate. I know God knows all about me but I don'T want to talk to Him about it. See, knowing that as an abstract concept is one thing sitting down with him and making love and prayer and meditation and that's what it is that's too intimate so anyway we're getting back i'm going to finish with this then and i love questions please so anyway uh so this this this eight step this eight steps i have this list please do the eight step with your sponsor you i all of us can make more damage making amends the wrong way than the right way you don't go up to her and say you know what I'm sorry I didn't really like you I just wanted to sleep with you you're not gonna make her feel better okay that's not going to improve her spiritual life and let me just say this you know it's a small program here if you sleep with people in meetings you're gonna run out of people to sleep with after a while you know and it's tough to go into meeting and there's 12 people you slept with you know it's really tough so you know just be careful in america we have this thing you don't get your bread where you get your meat that saying and it just means you don't you know you just got to be careful here there's wonderful a marriages that happen and everything else but you know in early sobriety sometimes sex becomes the higher power you know i know many people who thought they were going to have a screw their way to sobriete that's basically the program they were working their first five or six years you know and again they stayed sober till they did the steps i don't know that it didn't work but it does make for a bad home group so uh or it makes for a home group where there's a lot of spiritual growth and a lot of tolerance you know one or the other you'll either be very spiritual or you'll kill each other so you know that's kind of i like that it's very alcoholic no middle ground so now i went to do the amends and i went through it with my sponsor and we figured out what the amens were and i'm going to tell you one of men's story about two i'm going to take two of men story very quickly now let me just i speak very fast am i speaking too fast no okay good um i didn't steal much when i was drinking i was cash register honest because i didn'T want to go to jail i'M short I'm white, in jail, I'm an hors d'oeuvre. Okay? I'm not going. I'm Not Going to Jail. But in my closet when I got sober, I had this lumberjack jacket that I had gone into Target, one of those expensive stores, and walked out with. And so I went back to the store. And it's one of Those Total American Stores, you know, lights. And I go up to the woman and I go, can I see the manager? And I know she can look right through me and tell, because I'm sure this is what she said. Manager to desk, manager to desk. Thief here. Alcoholic. Making amends. Let's get him out of the store. Let's go. Come on. Now, this was in South Carolina 1980, okay? And I'm looking down at my shoes, and all of a sudden these little shiny shoes come, these little polyester pants, this little white shirt with a big neck, pins in the pocket, and glasses. And I're looking into the face of Bubba. and i'm like a hippie i'm going man couldn't you have given me like the record guy who knows who t-rex is come on i'm trying to be good here how come i got this lame guy to make an amends to and he says can you help can i help you and i went and i had this whole speech hi i'm steve i'm an alcoholic i'm on a spiritual quest i'm making amends i go i'm steeve i stole don't arrest me i'm sorry i don't do it anymore here and you know and he he looked at me and he looked at me i made this sort of plea about stealing and i was sorry and i wouldn't do any more and He looked at me and he went, you're going to really mess up my inventory. See, here I was, car area in the cross-up Calvary, thinking I was a bad mamma jamma. And this guy just didn't want to mess up his inventory. And my sponsor worked at me because most sponsors who are pretty good will say, their inventory is not your problem. You owe that money. You've got to pay it some way. But rather than force it on him, my sponsor said, just ask him what his favorite charity is and you can give the money to that. And that's what we did. And I walked out. As I started to walk out, he said, hey, you. I turned around. I knew the police were going to handcuff me now. And he said, I don't know what happened to you, but I'm glad it happened. And what happened in that minute, and that was 24 years ago, I can see that guy's face today, met him once, never saw him again, is I was connected to him, and here I was, a thief, going into it and making amends, and I was arrogant about the way a guy looked. He looked too straight for me. Here's a guy probably making an honest living, taking care of his kids, never stole anything in his life, and I'm judging him. And for just that moment, he and I were brothers. And I don't know about you, but one of the things alcohol did is it stopped making me feel so separate. We talked about it this morning, the bondage of self. It's not a bad thing. It's I'm bound up. I'm trapped in me for whatever reason, however it got there. And alcohol let me out. Let me play with you. I didn't care. I wasn't afraid anymore. I could walk up to you and ask you for a date. And even though you said no, no, no, not if you were the last man on the earth, earth, earth. I didn't care. I went and asked the girl next to you, you know? You want a date, baby? Come on. And I don't know why that line didn't work because I didn' t know about Al-Anon then. If I'd been doing it in Al-Alanon, I'd have lots of dates. But the other man I want to tell you about is my father. My father was the greatest man I ever knew and he was strong. And I tell you what, I hope every child feels like they did when I felt in my father's arms. When I was in my Father's arms, I knew nobody could hurt me. And now that was an illusion, but that's what I believed, and my father was very shut down. He'd grown up in an orphanage, but he did love. He would have been a perfect person. He didn't talk about love. He wasn't very huggy, but he did love. I knew my father loved me because he hugged me, and because of what he did for me, and you know, my father went out from a series of strokes, and I was resentful at God. I didn't like the way he was killing my dad. I didn't mind he was killing him. I just didn't like the way my dad died, and my dad deserved to be able to spend the last couple of years of his life on a lake fishing. That was his church. That was his meeting and he didn't get that and uh and uh one a time sometimes a child is privileged to do for their parent what the parent did for them and when my father was paralyzed and couldn't feed himself i had the advantage to feed him and change him and i couldn't do it i couldn'T do it every time i was given that i would try to get out of the room and my father died and i knew i owed him an amends and many times i get guys go how will i ever make up for what i did and if i hear that i know we've done eight one through eight pretty well i'm sober i'm but how am i ever gonna and I'm going to tell you, if you need to, God will give you the opportunity. So I'm in L.A., and I'm on the 6,000 Ward of County General, which is the end of the road for alcoholism, people there that look like hamburger meat. Now, I'm In this guy's room, and if I come to your house and have to use the restroom, I am going to play the water because I am very, I Am going to put on the water because I Am very, very shy about that kind of thing. And this old drunk is getting up out of his bed trying to get to the bedpan, and all of a sudden I Am helping him, and I Am taking care of him, I AM doing the deal, and In getting the nurse, and Im in the middle of the hallway, and I'm leaving, and I realized, oh my God, he even looked like my father. And one and one equals three here. I can't tell you how maybe you won't get your kids back, but you'll get alcoholic sons and daughters. See, this is my problem. I give love to Debbie, andI want love back from Debbie. Debbie can't give me love. She's busy. But Hector, he'll give me life. No, the hell with Hector. I don't want it from Hector . I want it form Debbie. I gave it to Debbie. I don' t want it froHector. Hector's going, I love you. Let me know. Hector, shut up. Debbie loved me. I'm busy, Steve. I can't love you and finally I learned take the love from where it's coming and you have to take the amend the way it comes. It may not be dressed up the way I think it is but it'll be there and I promise you there are people dead. There are people that you'll never see. I make living amends to women. I love living amens. I like make living amendments. One of the things I feel the worst about is driving drunk. Now, I had no choice. I had a drink and I had to drive to get the booze. So I had to drive drunk. I had no choice, but I feel badly about that. I'm grateful I didn't kill anybody. But you know what? It's taken a long time, but I know how to drive sober today. I know when somebody is tailgating me to pull over and let them pass around and hit the brake and let them go on their way. And I didn' t know how to do that for a long while. I'm still today trying to amend in my driving, this is just a little thing, what I had, what I did when I was drinking. And it's not a burden, it's not horrible, it is a privilege. And I just want to say one last thing and I'm going to shut up. We've talked a lot today about doing the steps, we talked about it a lot last night and this is all true. We talked a long about doing the steps and service and being involved and remember, I think it's funny that a big book thumper is called the Taliban because I don't understand what that means, somebody who says you can only do it my way and there's no other way. Now, but somebody who says the steps are the answer, that's not a Taliban. That's the only solution we have here, folks. We don't have anything else. The thing that expels the obsession to drink are the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you don't need them, that's great. I do. I can't... I have to have a spiritual experience sufficient enough to expel the obsession to drink. And the only thing I've found is the 12 Steps. Not the fellowship. Not even service. because service will get you pissed off after a while, because they don't behave the way you think they should after you've been good. See? After all I've done for you, see? And so if I haven't had a spiritual experience, my service work is just so I look good in AA and I can tell you how many babies I got and I'm a spiritual giant. You know, after a While Hector said it, that becomes boring. And seeing the miracles in AA becomes boring and being sober becomes boring and my life becomes boring And so I'm going to tell you what I believe is why people stay around here. And the happiest people in AA that I know are like this. And it's a vision for you, and it talks about that Bill went back to New York. And there was Bob and Bill D. in Akron. And it says that these alcoholics found out that they had to work with others in order to maintain their sobriety, but that motive became secondary. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells me that staying sober becomes my secondary motive. I'm not here to stay sober anymore I will stay sober by coming here there are times when I need here to make sure I stay sober but most of the time I'm here, I am no longer here to stay sober. I am here to experience the joy that comes into a life when another person gets this and that's what the big book says is the primary reason to stay in meetings and you look at people who love newcomers you look at people who love to give this thing away you look a people who are not bored and it's because they know they've had a miracle happen and they can't wait for somebody else to get it I want somebody else together who's up today who's gonna get who can I give it to who can i get who needs who needs I got so much here I gotta give it away if you do that Alcoholics Anonymous won't become boring I don't those people who were like that and I am and I'm not I don see them They're my role models. They're the people I want to be like when I grow up, you know? They're The People. They're not always pleasant. They can be grumpy and curmudgeon-y. They can being happy. They can naive. They can cynical. But what I know about them is they love to give. They love to sing the song of Alcoholics Anonymous and somebody harmonize with them, you know, and they never get tired of it. They're like little kids. And isn't that what they used to say? If you want to enter the kingdom of God, you have to be a little, like a little child. And this is the playground, folks. This is the Playground. You know, if you're not having fun here, you're going to the wrong meetings because this is the greatest show on earth for two bucks or a hundred kroner or whatever it is that it costs you here. Probably a lot more than I could pay. But anyway, thank you very much. Take a break and please give me some questions. Okay. Thank you.