The Disease of Perception and the Hamster Wheel That Keeps Turning – Ken D.

Hi, my name is Ken and I'm an alcoholic. hi folks you know it's a funny thing i'm sober a while and you know you think you know something for the longest time i don't know where this came from nobody i just picked it up i thought but i always thought oregon and california were in the same time zone you know i just uh i don'T KNOW WHERE i DON'T KNOW where i picked that up so like when it was 7 30 i was here that oh i did i have egg on my face i said oh yeah yeah i still had an hour to go i mean well that's it you live and you learn right i want to thank uh jamie and all the committee for inviting me to come on up this is great i've enjoyed myself tremendously uh yeah you guys gonna have difficulty duplicating this next year i hope you have a very very creative committee and uh and i've enjoyed all the speakers so far it's been really really exciting you know i've i've been coming here so long that i have absolutely no defense against the next meeting you know I just uh you know I start out to go to get some ice cream and I'm at an AA meeting I mean it's just uh it's amazing And I always know that this is a disease of perception. You heard that a lot this weekend. You know, it's like the teacher was trying to teach math to this kid, and he was about eight or nine years old. He was just having a lot of trouble picking up this math, and so she kept him after school to tutor him. And she said, look, if there's 12 birds and they're sitting on a wire and I shoot seven of them, how many are left? and the kid looked and he said you know I said none and she said well that's a tough question let me go a little slower there's 12 birds sitting on a wire and I shoot 7 of them how many are left and he says none again and she says how did you get that and he goes well if you shot 7 the rest of them would fly away and she goes know math wise that's a terrible answer but i really like the way you think and uh so he looked at her and he said can i ask you a question and she said sure and he says there's three women coming down the street they all have an ice cream cone one's licking it one sucking it one's biting it. Which one is the married one? And she thought for a moment and she said, I guess the one sucking it. And he said, you know, it's the one with the wedding ring, but I really like the way you think. And what you guys just did is really the reason I love to come to these things. I love to hear people laugh, particularly when they're a little tense you know because i know some things about laughter that most folks just don't know and that is uh you know you cannot laugh and think at the same time so every time you're laughing you're getting a respite from your favorite subject which is you so uh you and the other thing is we know now from the science people that as you laugh it produces a lot of endorphins. It creates a lot of positive things in your body to help fight pain and create good chemistry for you. Increases your oxygen supply and all that good stuff. So it's really important to laugh, you know? And if you're an AA and you can't laugh, then you're missing out on the biggest joke, which is you, you now. And you might as well laugh because everybody else is laughing at you. So, you known, is he laughing at me? No, he isn't. Everybody is, you known. like that and that's just the way it is i mean uh i i hang out with guys fortunately you know i got sober back in new york and you know i'm totally unscarred by education uh you know whatever that stuff was going on i was someplace else so i was about you know 40 years old before i realized that moby dick was not a venereal disease you know like that's the way i was I am one of those guys that, you know, I was, you know, and the nice part about that is you don't have to be the brightest bulb in the room to get sober. You know, you could be one of Those people who hangs out there by the, you Know, where the buses Don't run and you can get sober here. I work with a lot of guys and when they're new It's really funny because you look at them, you Know, and they have that look newcomers have a Look and you know they've been working on it for years and it's like you know and you look back at him it's like the hamster is dead but the wheel is still turning yeah and you say to yourself oh my god you know and and they're always willing to share with you your best idea which is always good for a laugh always good for life i mean it's just an amazing thing i uh i have a granddaughter as a result to having a granddaughter i get to watch a lot of movies that i have seen before but i never seen them with my granddaughter and i get to see him from a whole different perspective and we watched uh the wizard of oz and in the wizard of ozz at the end there's a great scene because judy garland and the three folks that she brought to ozz are there and they're trying to get an appointment with the wizard and the wizard is behind the curtain and he's creating thunder and lightning and And he's carrying on, like, you know, trying to get them to not know who he is. And finally the little dog Toto runs over and pulls the curtain open. And when Judy Garland sees that the wizard is the guy behind the curtain, she looks at him and she says, You're a very bad man. And he looks back and gives one of the greatest responses. It's like an AA response. And he said, No, I'm a very good man. He said, I'm just a really bad wizard, you know? And that's the way it is with us. You know, I listen to people in AA. They think they're very bad. They're just very bad alcoholics, but they're really, really good people. You know when God sent us out from the home office, there was no flaws. You know we were just sent out perfect. And along the way, if you listen to People, I am a good listener. I had to be because I didn't have a lot of education. So I had a listen a lot to hear what was going on. And when you listen to people share, and I heard it several times this week, we somehow intuitively know that there's two of us. We know that There's the person, the persona that God sent out, and then there's the Person we made up. And listen closely when people share because you'll hear them say things like, I was just so sick and tired of myself. That's two people. You know? I was so fed up with me. so something behind the scene is watching this go on and knows that the person out there that we made up is the person who can't stay sober and that's the person that when you come in to Alcoholics Anonymous and you start taking the steps, that's the person you get to jettison. As you go through the steps it's a funny thing if you're an alcoholic of my type, you're trying to escape from a reality you're not in and it's very confusing at times if you're like me we spend most of our time housekeeping in a dream we have no clue what's going on and then are very adamant about the fact that we're right that's who we are we dig in because we don't have any idea we don' t have a clue we're most adamant when we're totally wrong I married myself a nice normal woman And when I got married, I was only married once. I'm not like some people. You know, they get whiplash with relationships. You know? I introduce some guys to gals and they say I do. You know that's a... You know. And they never last because, you know, California is a very unique place. They have this wedding vow and they say for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. And you hear the alcoholics say, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. I want the cream but not the milk if it's going sour. You know what I mean? And it's just who we are. And the reality is that when you get here, you get a chance to go through these steps and what you find out in going through the steps is that reality and fantasy can't coexist. so as you go through the steps you get a chance to jettison that make-believe person that we brought here and that's the nice thing about it and you get to enjoy life while you're doing it and you know and you laugh a lot I enjoy Alcoholics Anonymous and I agree with everybody who shared it if it wasn't for the laughter and the scratching I wouldn't be coming back here who wants to go into a room and say my name is Joe and I'm sober 12 years yeah i really want what you have joe oh i'm willing to go to any length to get that whoa whoa hell i'll even give up my day job you know i'll uh just let me hang out with you joe you know and i hear people share a lot about drugs and alcoholics and armistice and there's nothing wrong with that but you know I'm like I'm not going to do that I'm going to like an alcothorist I never used a drug in my life I never smoked marijuana I know this is gonna be offensive to you young people but I I never I never took a prescription drug I never did cocaine I never do I didn't even do Rogaine I did nothing you know I just I just just just did none of that stuff and and it's all and I lived in an area in Brooklyn when I was growing up where there were some people and everybody in my neighborhood who had respect was called Don and just that's the way it was and there was absolutely no drugs in my neighborhood I left my bike out in front of my house and the radio on the stoop and went in the house and when I came out the next morning the bike was there and the Radio was there no crime in my neighborhood I mean not going on you know and and I remember that if they catch you using drugs in the neighborhood or selling them the first time they give you a friendly reminder they put your hand in a car door and close it you know and then they take we just don't do that here you know what i mean you know we don't do that and uh and and then the second time that you did it we always figured you moved to jersey because we never saw you again so so what happened to vinnie i think he moved to jersey know what I mean you know like you know they used to say things like hey you know he was found dead in the trunk of a car hey if he fell asleep in the trunk of the car deserved to be shot you know it was a very simple logic you know and the deal was is that when i got sober i was very fortunate because i fell in with guys who were very basic you know and they and they got me started on the owner's manual the big book all the good meetings have one but anyway the uh but don't start with me but anyway they have the owner's manual and the reason is is that that's that's the program of alcoholics anonymous is in the big book of alcoholics synonymous and you hear people constantly say well there's steps here on the wall and the steps here are on the walls you know and if you want off-the-wall sobriety then that's where you get them you know but if you want to have a program you get a big book and you know almost every meeting they'll work out a deal with you like you can't refuse you know you take it home for nothing and and so the deal was as i started hanging out with these guys and and and the nice part about it is as i look back now the first thing they did was they they got me into the fact that i was powerless you know i love being around alcoholics today because the newcomer will tell you right out of the gate that he has no power but then he'll argue with you for two years about surrendering it you know okay i know i don't have it but i don'T WANT TO TURN MY WILL AND MY LIFE OVER TO GOD WHY I DON'T WANNA GIVE UP WHAT I HAVE BUT YOU HAVE NOTHING YEAH THAT'S WHAT I MEAN YOU KNOW LIKE I AM NOTHIN' BUT I DONT WANNA GIVE IT UP YOU KNOW AND THAT'S WHY IN THE 12 AND 12 THEY WROTE THAT GREAT LINE IT'S AMAZING IT'S IN THE THIRD STEP IN THE IN THE TWELVE AND TWELF IT SAYS If I continually turn my will and my life over to the care of God, then what will happen? I'll become like the hole in the donut. Well, I'm here to tell you the good news. And the good new is we are the hole-in-the-donut. The donut comes and goes, but the blank space is there forever. We are the whole. And thank God we are because everything is going to come and go except who we really are is going to stay and the nice part about that is that we are the hole in the donut and you don't have to worry about that stuff and the Nice part about getting sober is the fact that for the first time you get to see what's really going on I was married as I started to say to a gal who was so normal I mean you couldn't have an argument with it because everybody knew she was right everybody knew she was right you know like you know i would look at her sometimes and she would say she would see things like there's somebody outside can't wake up there's somebody outside and i go good that's where they belong outside that's why we have an outside you know when they come inside hey I'm your guy you know but they're outside you know and and so she would say things like that you know. And she always had a look when she said it like you know she woke me up one night and she said I had a terrible dream. I said what? She said I dreamt you took me to the desert and you left me there. I say look let me go back to sleep I promise to pick you up first thing in the morning you know like i just uh i'll do that you know i'll come by you know we're giving a shot and i'll never forget one time when we were living in new york and i was working over by wall street and i came home and and the stock market at that time it had its biggest downturn and uh when i walked in the house i had a couple of shooters and she said what's the matter you look terribly upset and i said the stockmarket had its worst day in the history of the stock market and she looked at me like she did before and she says we don't know any stock and i always wanted to say something but there was absolutely nothing to say you know it was you really couldn't engage somebody like that you know like uh you know when when she was right there you know and and and i realized at the time i was not right there you now i could be in a spot but not present you know people would look at me like i was really there but somehow they knew intuitively that i wasn't because all they'd have to do is like try to ask me a question you know i'd be swimming in the ganges or climbing you know mount suribachi or doing something else and they look and they say you're okay oh yeah that was always my best look yeah and if i bob my head you know i just got back you know yeah you know and and the reality of all of that is that it you know it took me a while in aa you know they talked about and you hear people talk about it today the spiritual spiritualness of this program and what i did was i looked at the word spiritual and inside the word spiritual is the word ritual and if you want to be spiritual there's a ritual you have to do and the ritual you Have to do is to divest yourself from your old ideas and focus on growing spiritually not to be frozen in your sobriety and you know don't be worried about how you look you know if you don't want to stumble just sit there and do nothing you know You'll never stumble, but you'll never get anywhere. And the idea here is to get up and, you know, we have T-shirts in our area that says leap before you look. Just jump into it. By the time you thought about it, you could have tried it twice. And then we have deals that say be a verb. We've got too many nouns in AA. Be a verb, go do something. And in the course of doing it,you'll learn what you need to learn. It's an amazing thing here that God has the game rigged. And the more you do, the more he does. It's kind of like that's just the way it is. I mean, I sponsor a psychiatrist who, he's the sickest person I've ever been around. To think that this guy is helping people is embarrassing. He read the big book and he said, the first thing he said was, you know, again, it's a very well-structured book, but it's vague. vague that's the way he talked vague and i just really tick him off because he knows i'm unscarred by education and so i said to him well let's look at this 11 steps see how vague it is it says like let's just read this one step it says when we retire at night Now, when do you think that might be? Like maybe when you say goodnight to the family and you kiss them. That's not so vague, is it? Like retire at night. Gives you some flexibility. We constructively, not destructively, we constructively review the day. Okay, I'll give you that one. I'll gives you that. Okay. let's jump down a little bit upon awakening upon awakening like in the morning when you open your eyes and you look around hey this looks like a pond awakening you. And then it tells you a whole bunch of stuff to do, you know? When agitated, ooh, that's a toughie. Ooh. When confused, ooh these are such vague terms I'm surprised anybody gets sober you know and this guy makes big bucks helping other people and let's read this sentence here because people get up in the morning i hear this a lot at meetings and maybe you do too but people say i get up In the morning and I get down on my knees and I do the third step prayer which is terrific and then I go about my day and then all these things seem to happen well the book says At least my book, I got one of those versions that has these words in it. It says many times, many times during the day, we say thy will be done. Many times. That's many, many, very many times. Many, many many, may many many times during the time you know not for two minutes in the morning many times and then it says we have to do this because we need to be disciplined. We are totally undisciplined people, and God needs to discipline us. Being unscarred by education, I looked up that word in the dictionary, discipline. It says to make simple. God's trying to make it simple for us. Just do the deal. Don't worry about it. And whatever you do, stop all that thinking. If alcoholics, if alcoholism is our primary disease, thinking is the second disease. I hear people say things like, I have a committee in my head and it tells me, it talks to me. I wake up in the morning and it's sitting on the bed, my mind, and it tell me. If you're having that much trouble, let me tell you right now, it's not your mind. your its body you know you know it's uh it's a tool like a hand or an eye or an ear or you know the other stuff you know it's not supposed to be governing your life you know and you have guys say well you know i think you know what praise yourself you got the whole day you know like 80 to 90 percent of what alcoholics think is repetitive and you know it's a disease it really is a disease i looked up the word disease it says when something is out of balance if you're doing that much up here you are out of balanced really out of bounds because it shouldn't be taken up that much time you know used to have on the walls of aa thing think think which meant you think about it two or three times and then you do a third step and talk to somebody else about it you don't go on and on and not about the same deal until people down here comes Mary I wonder what she's gonna talk about you know you're two decades down the road and it's the same do you know I've been thinking about you know when people start out what they've been thinking about in a run for cover because it's a you know because we scratch stuff that don't itch you know we just do we create most of a 90% of what goes on that's a problem we create it you know poor god takes the bum rap for it but it's not god doing this stuff it says in the book he doesn't create our misery we create our own misery we just don't want to take any action i want to think about it i talked to my sponsor about it i wrote about it took a seminar about it journaling about it meaning the bomb the boom the bing do something you know will you please the rest of us are getting a headache you know that goes on and on and living in the moment i had a guy the other day the psychiatrist he says i cannot live in the now like you suggest this is a learned man where the hell you think you're living i mean you think it's a good thing you think you're living in sunday or friday this is the only place you can live is in the is in the now there is no yesterday there is no tomorrow there's only this now and the reason that we have trouble with it is coming back to the mind again the mind is synonymous with resistance it doesn't want to do anything because if it starts to do things then it becomes secondary and it doesn't want to become secondary it wants to be paramount and sooner or later when you get really well here you realize this mind is my mind and it should be doing what i wanted to do my hand doesn't give me this kind of you know hey i'm going to get a drink you know it doesn't happen that way and so the reality here is you live in this now there is no yesterday there is no tomorrow when you look at yesterday when are you looking at it you're looking at it from this now when you're looking ahead you're looking at tomorrow from this now there is no other time but now you can't do anything but in the now you can only breathe here i think it was down today talking about breathing in there this is all done in the now and the reason that the now is so very important is because there's absolutely no problem in the noun the problem is looking back and looking ahead there's absolutely no problems in the know you know why that's where god is God is in the now. God's not doing Friday. We already did Friday. He's not going Sunday. We're not there yet. We're in this now. And we write about it in the big book because we say, There is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him. Amen. Let's go home. I mean, this is a dead deal, you know? That's where God is. And that's when people are in the know, they don't have any problems. their problems is always about making something up and thinking about reflecting on and looking back and checking it over checking it out and then maroon you know you say you say to yourself wow wow wow no wonder people look at i'm really exhausted and i didn't do anything you know are you kidding me you've been running for about a decade you know emotionally and you haven't and move forward. You haven't made one decision, you haven't done anything. And so the nice part about it is, as I hang out with guys, we're in the action. If you're not in the action, you're going anywhere. And somebody mentioned about pain being the touchstone of all spiritual growth. I didn't know. I read that book, I don't know how many times. I always thought I knew what a touchstone was. And then I said, you know what? I'm going to look it up in the dictionary. So I looked it up in the dictionary, and I don't know if you guys, maybe some of you do, but a touchstone is the thing that used to be used to tell the quality of gold and silver. If you had gold and silk in the old day, there was a salacious rock called a touchtone, and they rubbed it against that, and based on the mark that it made, they could tell the purity of gold and silvers. You have to go through this stuff. This is a great program if you're doing it. If you're thinking about it, nothing happens. Absolutely nothing. How come you guys are all getting better and I'm not? Did you ever notice that when you call us, we're not home? We're out doing something. We're doing something with another alcoholic. When you're working with another alcoholic it's terrific because the fact is is that your problems changed i thought you know my sponsor when i was new used to take me on these 12-step calls and we never called them in brooklyn 12-stop calls they used to say hey yo we got to go put the hit on this guy which was technical jargon for a 12- step call and so we'd go there and and when we get there it was always about doing what introducing the program of alcoholics anonymous into that home if it wasn't already there if they didn't know anything about it and you know they always had a woman who answered the door for some reason who was pre-alanine you know in that infamous bath robe you know and she would say he's upstairs so we'd go upstairs to see him you know like and he always looked like one of us you know he's in bed and he's uh you know well you know how it looks it's interesting it looks like mackerel you know like it's about three days old you know there's always an odair you know you pick up the odair on the first landing like i know he still up there you know and my sponsor he would sit down next to that guy and he'd tell me to go sit in a corner and i got to observe the miracle of aa because he'd start talking to that guy. And as he talked and told a little bit about A.A. and a little bit about himself, the guy would start coming back at him about, yeah, that's me too. And just like Lazarus, if not that night, the next night, that guy would rise up out of that bed and come to a meeting. And once he came to a meeting, you involved him in an activity, making coffee, doing something, because we knew that you didn't want anybody sitting around doing absolutely nothing but thinking. You know, you just didn't want these guys thinking. And in the reality of having them do stuff, what happened was they begin to forget their problems. You think you have a big problem, take a guy who's been on a run for a couple of days and you're going to take him to a meeting and he's still throwing up and put him in your vehicle. Suddenly every problem you had that day goes away. You're just saying, please God, don't let him chuck here. You know, like, please God, let him just hang in there. And then And you say, hey, you know, there's a window. It's a power window. I see the power, you know. And the deal is that you get to do things here that are just so interesting, that you get to meet people and you get to do stuff. And the main thing for me was I got a chance to grow in areas that I didn't even know I had been stunted in. It's an amazing thing when you wake up and you start to realize there's a whole world going on around it, around you, and you weren't even participating in it. You know, I, like everybody else, had great drunk stories about where I did things, but that's not my sobriety today. My sobrietry today is my sobrietty. You know what I'm doing since those things have happened. I definitely qualified to get here. I mean, my poor mom, what she went through, I mean she used to look at beer cans and read the ingredients and then look at me and say, I don't know what they put in here makes you act so stupid. You And she was my support system. I was really counting on my mom. But I would just do that stuff. I mean, I would go out and drink and do all the things that we do. I would have dependency issues when I was drinking. I would say something like, is my fly open? And they'd say no. And I'd say, well, it should be. I'm peeing. You know? and that's just the way I went through life you know like it was like I drank stuff that not only hit the spot it removed it you know like it just went away you know like it was something that just happened and the reality is is that when I get sober with these guys I get sober with you know we have conversations sometimes and I'm really glad we're not being taped by Mensa, you know, or somebody really sharp because, you now, these are your, you know your basic like how long you're sober. You say there's a dead bird we all look up. I mean those are the clever minds, you know. I mean, you hear these conversations between two or three guys that respond like, hey Vinnie, why is there a light on the vacuum? Don't be so stupid in case the power goes out. You know? And then people say, well, you know, if your mother didn't have any children there's a good chance you may not. you know so these are the guys I got sober with and then my sponsor had bought a car it was a station wagon it was the first nine passenger station wagon my sobriety date is July 5th of 1970 and they had a nine passenger station wagon and he always used to make me sit in the back there was a door that kind of opened up and they put me in the bag back and i used to you know take a little resentment to that and i said hey yo how come i'm always sitting in the back and looking out the back and he says uh i want you to particularly pay attention to the wreckage of your past so me and the other guy would sit back there fast eddie who was really i took him to the trophy shop to get some bowling trophies he looks around he goes wow is this guy good so we would we would sit in the back and talk and have these discussions you know like yeah well just tonight i'm telling them that this is not for me and bum but bing bum and he'd say you guys got something to say? No, no, we're just chatting, you know, just chatting. And the nice part about that was as a result of being totally involved, I got to do things that I would have never gotten a chance to do otherwise. When I got here, I was in the process of going to jail and the grand jury had indicted me and things weren't looking good. And I had a sponsor who was very sensitive to my needs, and I would call him and say things like, hey, I'm going to jail. He'd say, good, that's where you belong. I'd say my wife left me and I can't see my kids, and he'd say that's terrific, it's about time they caught a break. And I'd go on about two or three other things that were very, very important to me, and then he'd say, hey Ken, maybe you'll get lucky and die tonight. And he'd hang up. And suddenly I had a different problem. And the deal was is that as a result of him being so sensitive I got a chance to just say, Hey, you know we're going to go to meetings. I mean, I'll tell you, this will give you an idea of where I was at when I got here. I got hier in July of 1970, and Bill Wilson died in New York, and they broke it in all the papers in January of 1971. I was sober about six months. And it was in the paper, and everybody knew that they were going to break his anonymity. It was already decided by General Service they were gonna do that. And it wasn't until then that I was able to get out of jail. It was in a paper that Bill Wilson had died. So I called him up, and I said, geez, this thing looks like it might work for me, and now the owner died. And they'll be closing it down, you know? He said, keep going to the meetings. They're going to try to keep them open for a while. So that's why when I hang out with these guys like I do, I love them. You know, in San Diego, there's probably not too many wackos that I'm not involved in, either directly or indirectly. And I sponsor a guy who comes to my house. He's a Persian. He's actually an Iranian, but he's a Persian. And I had a guy, he loves to come on Monday night. He used to love to come and watch football when he got off work, but he had to pray real fast because they've got to pray before the sun goes down. And this guy got my name from somebody and my address and just came over and was having trouble with God. He knocked at the door. He came. He said, my sponsor sent me over here to talk to you because I'm having trouble with God. So I said, well, sit on the couch. And it never occurred to me that Sam was in the bedroom. So about five minutes later, Sam was getting to the prayer part of his prayer. He had washed his hands and done all that stuff. And from the bedroom, you hear, whoa, whoa. He looks at me and says, what the hell is that? i said it's sam doing his third step you know like he's over there i haven't seen that guy since he's gone i don't know where he went he just got up and left i called the guy who sent him he hasn't seen him either so if you see a guy wandering around with hair shaved on both sides and a little like design in the middle tell him it's okay you know but you just don't know what's going to happen, you know? And the deal is, is that I love this kind of life. I mean, when I got here, my sponsor said to me, you are totally undisciplined. He said, but if you follow the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and incorporate these steps into your life, what will happen to you is you will become a disciplined wild man, and you'll really be somebody worthwhile knowing. And that's what I strive to do is to become a disciplined wild man. I never want to be someone who just sits around, you know, and counts beads. That's not me. But I like the idea of the discipline I have because it allows me to go out and experience all of life. The greatest security I have today after the life I've lived is that I trust and count on impermanence. I know that whether it's good or bad in my life, it's going to come and go. And I hate to say this with newcomers and young people in the room, but if you're going to be involved with another human being, I'm going to tell you three things you're gonna have to deal with. The person that you're involved with is either gonna die, change, or leave. And unless you want to go live in a cave by yourself, you better get used to the idea that that's what happens. It's not a bad thing, it's just reality. You know, and for most alcoholics, we have trouble with reality. You know? Again, it comes back to our perception. It comes back TO OUR PERCEPTION. You know I always like the story of the two kids who are in the hospital, two five-year-old kids, and the one kid looks at the other kid and he says, I'm in here to have my appendix out. What are you in here for? And the other kids says, I'm here to be circumcised. And the first kid goes, Oy vey! he said they did that to me when I was first born and I didn't walk for a year you know like and the deal is is that that's the way alcoholics are we get information and we just don't know how to file it it comes in and you think well this is real but this is not real it's just the way it is I always tell our new guys about the Catholic guy who was crossing the street and got hit by a bus. And as he was dying and the cop was holding him in his arms, he said, is there a priest here? Someone can pray over this guy. And there was no priest. But there was an alcoholic there. And so the alcoholic stepped out and said, I'm not a priest, but I've lived in back of the Catholic Church all my life and I know all the prayers. And they said, would you please pray then for this guy? You're better than nothing. So he got down next to the guy who was dying got right up to his ear and he says, B-6-I-14, you know. And as the guy was checking out, he didn't know if he had bingo or not, you know. And that's the way we are. We don't allow the fact that we don't know anything to keep us from getting up front you know and and the bottom line for me has been that as i've been in in this in this journey of my life like everybody else you know there was a time in my life where i was retired and it looked like i was never going to have to go to work again and the company that was paying me my retirement 126 year old company went bankrupt and so i had to go back to work. I had a sister and a brother die a week apart, and my sister died Christmas day of 1985. She went into the hospital in October with cirrhosis, and she hemorrhaged until Christmas day, and he died weighing about 60-some pounds, and then I went to that funeral, and that year, Christmas was on a Wednesday, and we wakened a Thursday and Friday, and we buried a Saturday and came back home, and New Year's Eve, I was at a party, an AAU New years eve party and i got home and had a call and my brother was dead and the following week i was sitting in the same funeral home burying my brother who you know we hadn't even we hadn'T even the grave was still dirt from where my sister was and then my other sister took her life and then My mom just died she just kind of gave up and died so that year i went to the cemetery about eight times and all i know is that in the reality of life is that things are gonna go the way they're gonna go and you better get on with life the way it is right now because it may never work out just the way you want it if you're sitting around waiting for it to happen so that when everything's right you're going to go live uh it could be a long wait you know and i want to tell you something not to ruin your day but waiters die you know they just die like everybody else. So, you know, and they usually die very angry because they just thought it was going to be different. Well, if I did this, I thought that would happen. You know, there's no logic in this world and people treat it like it's logical. This is not a logical world. If this was a logical world men would ride side saddle you know and we don't we just don't you know woodstock lasted longer than the gulf war the gulph wall was in tv guide it said that was when bush said we're going to do this starting January the 3rd or whatever, and the TV guide said regular programming may be preempted due to war. So this is not necessarily a logical world, you know? And people come to AA and they sometimes say things like well there's us and the normal people. Watch my lips. There are no normal people! There are just people who haven't shared with you yet. But there are no normal people i mean you ever see what they buy in the store you know a lady in front of me a couple of months ago she had she had a spiritual dog biscuit like a spearmint dog biscuit for her dog i looked at it spearmine dog biscuit you know if i want my dog to have good breath i'll put livoris in the toilet you know like you know i uh and and she was normal you know she was a normal person and then did you ever see him try to get to the line you know they wanted the normal people when the guy says to you sir i can help you here and they were there ahead of you you see how normal they are lady come bearing down on me with a shopping cart i was you know like i saw her out of the corner of my eye thank god and so i pulled my little basket back come on come on you know and kind of waved her into the chute made her happy get in there hit it all right good for you straight where you belong first you know don't worry about the rest of us you get going here you know and she got in there and of course she says no check she had a check you know And then the guy took the check from her, and he said, what's your phone number? And I said, don't tell him. He's not going to call you anyway. And that's the way you want to go through life. If you can make somebody laugh in the course of a day, you've done a good deed because there's a lot of folks out there who are really uptight, really up tight. I saw a mother grabbing her kid in the shopping store the other day and going down the line there and she's yanking this kid because she was tired and she wanted to get done and the kid wanted to stop and look at cookies and stuff and just then they were passing the ketchup and there's that Paul Newman ketchup, you know and with his picture on it and I said, oh my God I didn't even know he was missing you know and so she laughed and then the kid kind of looked at me like you gotta make people laugh you know because they're really uptight and that's why i hang out with guys who that's what we do a lot of you know like and when we really get to laugh a lot is when someone's sharing a good idea you know let me tell you this good idea i had you know what ways can pace yourself you know let me let me call a couple of the guys we don't want to miss this do you mind if i tape it you know but that's just the way we are and the nice part about being in recovery is that it doesn't matter who the joke is on the main thing is you realize we're all connected you know i've been following this dna stuff it excites the daylights out of me to read about it and and you know in one little cell there's enough dna to fit to fill 250 telephone directories one little cell 250 telephone directorries and what we're talking about on the tv is how we're so different you You know, like they can find people who have committed crimes or not committed a crime or a sexual deal or whatever. But you know the nice thing they're finding out about that? It's about 98%, almost 99% of it, we're exactly alike. We all came from the same joint. It doesn't matter how we look now. We all started out from the sameness. We all come from the very same joint, and whoever sent us out here sent us our hero okay, contrary to all the other stuff. You know we were sent out okay, but somewhere along the line we forgot who we were and we made up this other person and in making up that other person we couldn't live with that other person so you drank and you used behind it and the nice part about it is that when you get sober you don't have to be that fool there was a lot of things I thought were funny that nobody else laughed at and just that's the way it was I used to pull up to the line at the Holland Tunnel it would be backed up two miles And I'd say to the guy, I'll have fries, a milkshake. And he'd say, hey, pal, we don't have no food here. And I said, well, you better get it. The line's really backing up. And I always thought stuff like that was funny. But it wasn't funny to the transit guy who had to deal with yaha me. And that's just the way it is. And when you start getting in recovery here and you start noticing that, hey. Life is the way that it is and that each day is good if I just leave it alone. And if I go and do the very same things tomorrow that I did today as far as practicing the ritual, getting out there and going to meetings, working with others, reading the literature, and trying to be of service, then what happens is good things seem to happen. I don't have to work on them happening. They just happen. I've, like most people in life, have sustained loss as I've gone through here. I had a son who was perfectly healthy, and then he was dead. And I got to be there when he died. And when he was dying, he had lost weight. He came down with AIDS. And he was sent home from a cruise he was on, doing what he always wanted to do, travel around the world singing. He was on a cruise ship singing. And then they sent him home, and I picked him up at L.A. Airport on the 8th of July in 1993. And he Was Dead the Day After Labor Day, September 7th. And I got to be there for him. I gotto be therefor him. I gottoseehim go through the deal he went through. and then my ex-wife when we divorced the kids stayed with me so i got to be a single parent for these kids and and thenmy ex wife started showing up at my house because she wanted to be supportive and i gotto meet my husband in law and uh you know and that's uh and uh he's a nice guy you know he'sa good guy and he was very supportive and did what he did and when And when my son died, his mom was holding one hand and I was holding the other hand. And the deal was for us, we looked at each other and I stood up and I said to her, let's just walk down here to the meditation center that was in the hospice. And I said this thing is so big that I just want you to know that I want to do an amends with you that if there was ever anything I ever did that hurt you i just want to walk away from here clean because this is going to be enough for both of us to carry and she made an amends to me and i made an amen to her and we sat in that meditation chapel for about a half hour and then she went home with my husband-in-law and then i went home with my son and we were healthy people we were whole people you know there's something about you know, if you look up the word healing and whole, they come from the same root word. And health comes from the Same root word, and if you're going to be healthy here, you've got to be whole. And you have to really learn that life is not always going to give you life just the way you think. And sometimes you wonder what it's all about. You just sit there in your own little deal and wonder, you know how come it worked out this way? Why did this have to happen? Or why did this have to happen now and I don't have any answers for that but I do have a program of action you know AA has never gotten me over anything I never got over anything working the steps but I got through a hell of a lot you know I got through stuff because it gave me the next indicated thing to do and even though I was taking the shot I was getting through it and I didn't have to stop to explain it to anybody else. I just had to do it because that's what I had to do at the time, and the AA community around me was great. You know, we talk about this footsteps in this, in the sand, and we say sometimes there's only one set because God is carrying us. That was not my experience. I had a lot of footsteps. There was, you know, guys came over my house who, you know, were trying to help me who couldn't help themselves in some cases. You know? I sponsor a lot 90s and new millennium guys. You They do half the cleaning and half the cooking and half the wash, and they live alone. Now they were at my house to help me. Now they were there to help me, and it was a deal where in the process of them doing that we developed a good rapport. I remember when I was going through my divorce from my wife. I'm very fortunate. I met my sponsor at the first meeting that I ever went to and he's still my sponsor today and I'm sober over 30 years I have the same sponsor and and I remember when I was going through my divorce and I called him I said this is what's happening and he said just remember this when this deal is over you're gonna get custody of you and you want to be as healthy as possible and and you know along the way you just meet people I I told you I was in this jackpot when I with when I first got here and and and I met this guy at a meeting, and he was new too. And he owned a Cadillac, and at that time a CadILLac was a status symbol. So I said, hey, he's got a Cadilla in his suit. He's okay. And so he and I were going to meetings together. And then as it turned out, I had to go for a preliminary hearing before a district attorney. Now, New York City, there's only about 400 or 500 of these guys in Kings County. And so I go into the office, and who's sitting behind the desk? but the guy I've been going to the meetings with. And he looks at me and he says, I didn't know you did this crap. And I said, I sure didn't know you didn't do this crap when we were running around sharing, you know? And so we worked out a deal on that. It was a financial deal and I made amends on that financial deal for the first 20 years of my sobriety. And instead of going to jail I went free. And, you know, there's a difference between being free and being loose you know and in aaa i've learned that difference i know what it is to be free today i know What it is, to be able to get up in the morning and get on with life knowing that whatever comes that day It's going to be okay Whether i see it that way initially or not and And it takes some time if you knew you know you don't do it in a day or two here it takes some time and and i remembered i remembered uh seeing a deal for me that worked where it said about uh i went to a retreat one time and there was a buddhist monk there and he said there is no way to happiness happiness is the way and he said there there is there is no way to enlightenment. Enlightenment is the way, and there is no way to peace. Peace is the way. And after it would, he called us in individually to ask us if we had gotten anything out of it, and I said, yeah, I did. And he said, what'd you get? I said I got the AA triangle. He said, what's that? And so I showed him unity, service, and recovery. I said my happiness has always come from being of service. That's when I have the best happiness in my life, when I'm being of service. And the unity part of this comes from the peace. You know, I know peace now because I'm not at odds with anyone. I don't have anything to work out with anybody. I've done my amends. And the deal of being enlightened comes for me from the fact that if I wasn't sober, I wouldn't have a shot at any of this stuff. And so life gets very peaceful on the one hand. And on the other hand, you get to hang out with the wackos. There's a dance tonight, and I won't run you guys late over because I know a 13-step dance is like... It's very important for fellowship. So when you see me go like this, start to pick out your targets of opportunity. Strap on your wacko magnet and get ready for the big dance. And the guy you have tonight, he must have been handpicked for this event. His name is DeLay. So I'm going to the dance for DeLAY. I may be DeLoser, but I'm going anyway for Delay. And the deal is that you just see everything in the context of it's okay. It's okay." And I remember when I was out there riding through the TV shooting up the land that I used to love that country-western music, you know? You know, they used to play like songs like I'm just two six-packs away from loving you. You know what I mean? So a saddle on the range, Mama. Throw a saddle under the stove, Mama, we're riding the range tonight. You know? Like all these great... You used to kiss around the lips, but it's all over now. you know like you know and these great songs that you'd hear and you'd say yeah you know thank god for music you know. And so I will keep you here over that time but I just wanted to wind down by saying to you that in my lifetime I've been in touch with a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous under all kinds of scenarios and the one thing I've learned from listening to people and watching people is that at their base level, everybody is good. There are no evil people. And the good news is, is that no matter how you live your life, if you try to change it, you'll be okay. It's not like you can't, I've done so much, I can't make it up. You've never done so much, you can'T make it UP. God is in such hot, hot pursuit for all of us that eventually He catches us. No matter how far we run, no matter what we do, He catches us. You know, when I was running numbers for this guy back east, Vinnie, I remember going in one time. I was about 12 or 13 and I said, I was flunking out of school because I couldn't pass math and the teacher at that time made about three grand a year and I was making about a hundred and a quarter running numbers. And I was failing. And so I remember calling to Vinnie and saying, Vinny, you know anything about this God stuff? And he said, yeah, what do you want to know? And I said well, you you know, do you believe in God? I said, of course I believe in God. I said do you believe that there's a devil? He says who cares? I says well, you know tell me about that. He said Ken, he said do we ever lose when we run a number? I said no, we never lose. He said somebody wins but we never loose, right? I said right. He says you think God's going to make up the game he loses? i thought you're a little sharper than that you know and that's the way it is here it's like god is in such hot hot pursuit and and you get to hear read these great lines out of the big book like you know i don't know about you guys but when i was drinking when i picked up a drink and i drank it every promise that's on page 83 and 84 happened for me. Booze gave me the promises. Every single one. You know, I didn't regret the past. I didn' t give a shit about the future. I intuitively knew everything, you know. I was like Wonder Boy, you now, just tear off that chest thing and show the big S, you know? I thought it stood for Superman, you kno? And the deal was is that what booze gave me at one time, it always took back at another time. but the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous gave me these promises and have never, never, ever taken them back. It's allowed me to enjoy them on a daily basis, and it allows me to do a lot of fun things. It allows me just to get out there and laugh at a lot of things, you know? I have stuff that goes on that sometimes, you know, I'm at that stage in life now where I'm concerned about the hereafter, I guess. You know,I go from the kitchen to the living room and I wonder, what the hell am I here after? you know like i don't know you know so i'm going through a new period of my life you know you know it starts to happen like that you know a number i knew forever now i don t know what's that number you know and it's changing and things happen you know i have a thing sometimes i wonder who makes up the names of things you know i have something in my refrigerator it's called a crisper it should definitely be called errata you know you know everything i put in there i never get to eat again you know i don't know why i just don't take it straight to the garbage you know like because it doesn't have that odair at that initially but i put it in the crisper and then somehow i forget it's there and then i open the crispr up and it's like working with a newcomer and so it should be called errata i'm gonna you know I'm going to get a little thing and put R on there instead of CRISPR. But that's the way life is today. It's just a lot of things happening, most of which I had no clue were happening. And now I'm just a part of it. And when people look at you and you're laughing a lot, they think you know something. And what you really are laughing at is how little you know and how it's okay not to know anything. And if people ask you these big questions, If you start saying on a regular basis, practice this. I don't know. They stop asking. Sooner or later, you don't have any pressure on you at all. I can remember one time a guy following me. I landed at Newark Airport and the guy is following me in his car because he wants my parking spot and turning around and just blowing up at this guy. Hey, I got enough pressure. I don' t know where the hell I parked. I don''t need you behind me. you know, you know. And now today I get to laugh at all that stuff. I came out of the bank the other day. I just bought a dude, what do they call it, an SUV and I have this thing that you point and it opens your locks and I walk out. Oh, there it is. And the car over here went beep, beep, beep. I was heading for the wrong car, you Know, like, and I just turned around casually like I knew and just walked over there, you Now, it doesn't matter, you You know, it doesn't matter. Who cares? You know, who really gives anything about this stuff? And I see people they're losing sleep like because they don't know something. You know that I always have guys that come by and they say things like the moon is bright. I know what they mean, but the moon can't be bright. The moon is totally dark. We wouldn't even know there was a moon if there wasn't a sun. it's the sun that gives the moon anything it's they way the sun hits the moon that we know the moon is there and it's same way an alcoholic synonymous with the steps and the individual alcoholic we have no light you know we just don't know where we're going but if we're plugged in to the light then what happens is everything seems to work out I just know that I get a lot of laughs out of life because there's a lot to be laughed at you know anytime you really need to really get a chuckle watch the news you know and listen for what people really know nobody knows anything what they say is well if this happens joe or mary if that were to take place well tell me something you know one thing that's all i want to hear is one thing even the weatherman you know it could rain good son you know can you give me some vital information here help me get going and the deal is it doesn't matter you know nobody else knows so if you feel like you don't know don't worry about it and remember this nobody ever hurt their eyes looking at things positively you know you know don't don't hang out with people who see life as a bucket of shit you know and the handles are on the inside you know don't uh you know don't hanging out with those people try to hang out with people who are you know the ayatollah of rock and rolla you know the people who out there having some fun you know not these people just sitting around that oh yeah it's another day oh yeah well you may get lucky and die and these days are so precious you don't want to be wasting a one of them they go by so quick you know and then you you say to yourself this is about getting out there and enjoying it, and I'm really glad you guys asked me to come here because I've had a great time. I mean, just being in the hall and watching the flow of traffic and realizing this is our best effort. Okay, here they come again. And God bless the committee. You did a good job, I mean to tell you. Just the entertainment was worth the trip. I didn't even know there was going to be entertainment. What are we doing? I don't know. They said leave. Nobody questions anybody today. What did they say? They said come. What are they doing now? Said sit. you know this is uh this is it well winding down now remember you know don't look for miss right look for Miss right now you know maybe miss perhaps you know you know it's like yeah she's married eight times before oh this looks exciting and keep laughing because it's great to hear you laugh when people laugh there's something happens to their face that you know it's kind of they lose all control and you know everything is okay because you say if I'm laughing I don't even notice it's on fire it's okay don't worry about it You know, when people ask you the tough questions, just look at them and say, I don't know. Don't worry. And then after a while, the pressure will go away. You know? There's a mystic prayer that I came across that I really like, and it goes like this. It says, you cannot catch hold of it, nor can you let go of it. In not being able to get it, you get it. When you are speaking, it's silent. when you are silent, it speaks. And that's the word of God. When we are silent God gets to speak. And when we're speaking he's silent. And that is the way it goes. I have a friend who took his life a few years back. He was the kindest, softest, gentlest human being I had ever known. And whenever he came into my house he was from India. He used to put his hands together and say, Namaste, Ken. And Namaste means the God in me sees the God in you. And as long as the God in me is looking for the God in you, and the God in you is looking for the god in me, we won't hurt each other. We're all God's kids here. Sometimes it's really, really dark. And sometimes it's really, really light. But the nice part about it is just remember there's night and day. If you can hang on a little bit, the day will come. And if you're having trouble in the day, the night will come. This too shall pass." So our job here is really very simple. It's to take real good care of one another because we're only on loan and realize that no matter what that person is experiencing at the time, no matter how we perceive it, it's real to them. It's really real to then. So I want to thank you for letting me come here, take real care of another. I love you much. God bless you. Thank you.