Alcoholics Anonymous Blog/Video Nov 20 DonInLondon Step 11 "Truth Love Wisdom"
"Love, forgiveness, harmony, truth, faith, hope, light, and joy to every human being."
November 20, 2013 Step Eleven Month: "sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out." All I need be is good enough today? Driven to extremes in all elements of living is impossible: within the family, community, work and society. And often those of us who have been driven to extremes see the virtue in being simply good enough for one day.
From early life, burdens, motivations, aspirations keep feeding a desire to have everything. High expectations and very often no means to achieve these expectations. Politicians with their beliefs and opinions and opposite sides of their political divides play fast and loose with the aspirations of every human being. And on top of this a system which rewards extreme behaviour in the boardroom, extreme behaviour in the free market and then they wonder why so many seek oblivion from reality. Many have nothing, at this extreme oblivion might be preferable. When you have everything and nothing seems to matter, oblivion can be bought and feels preferable.
Being good enough today? Every person learns balance if they are fortunate and have the experience of life to understand where balance might be. And in the emotional and spiritual world in which we all live, balance is very relative to each person's personal circumstances. The work that I can do today, will be good enough for me, will it be good enough for you if we have some connection? I cannot say what is good enough for another person, I am happy to be making progress one day at a time to good conscience and dealing with life in all its difficulties.
Compare and despair is a horrible exercise in judging others. Either we end up looking down on some people or we end up looking out to other people we would like to be associated with and have what they have or even more. Storms flattened the dreams of ordinary people recently in different parts of the world. And even though we can be generous in whatever we do to help, it will never be enough? We cannot rollback time against the forces of nature, we often have to start again from scratch. Human endeavour requires extremes from time to time to make good on the bad and ugly of life. Good enough today? I will be better informed by bedtime.
Prayer: an exhortation to the God of your understanding, to good conscience, to the greater good of mankind, asking for help and guidance. Please help me is always a good starting point when trying to make sense of prayer which is not self-driven, nor selfish. Asking for help is often identifying the right people who do live to good conscience and might be able to help. Meditation: slowing down and calming our feelings so that matters can be reflected on and prioritised to the greater good as we come to understand it.
In my early days with Fellowship, I often heard the words, "the newcomer is the most important person in the meeting." And this simple truth can be forgotten in the extremes of living, where there is no time for anything but our own agenda. We can become cynical at one extreme, and a puritan at the other extreme. Somewhere in the middle is the truth, and yes the newcomer is the most important person in the meeting, and hopefully someone on safe middle ground and not at the extremes will offer a hand in friendship and Fellowship one day at a time.
It we really do understand our priorities and what we need to be good enough, and truly whatever you consider to be good enough is your benchmark because I cannot judge what your benchmark is, that is where we start each day if we do make time for a little prayer and meditation along the way. Saying yes to helping a person and then becoming resentful is the first of many resentments which can make any individual stricken and never good enough by their own impossible standard. Forgiveness is all part of living one day at a time.
Dear God: yesterday was quite a good day. I went to hospital to have tests and results for my ongoing conditions of type I diabetes and all the complications therein. Good news, a specialist and also a pragmatist gave me my results which were better than last time! He said he didn't want to patronise me, give me advice I already had and that I have enough experience to cope with what is going on. And fortunately for me, in the same area at the hospital is the general surgery department for outpatients. And although I had slipped through the system administratively, I was able to secure an appointment to get results of recent tests carried out to investigate some particularly distressing symptoms without a particular cause. A good enough result and a reminder that even though some people may be the very best in their professions, mistakes still happen. At least I was there and could do something about it without resentments and without anger. It was not always the case in the past, sometimes the harder we push and demand, the more people resist and ignore. Tolerance and love and forgiveness are key to getting anywhere in this life on any given day, especially today where we live.
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