The Last Part Before the Next Part

These next three segments are the last part of what I have to say. After a long process, I’ve reached a place in the Steps that represents the beginning of the rest of my life. Once I understood the importance of what I had accomplished, I was no longer as willing to hurt other people. I started to see my progress in that way. There’s just one question. How are my relationships with others?

The proof of a change in me isn’t in 12-Step meetings, talking about the book with a newcomer, or what I write here. The evidence is in my actions. Ask others- my children, coworkers, neighbors- about me. What they say about me is the proof, not what I say.

We continue our work on the Ninth Step, making progress at making amends, not only those people to whom we urgently wanted to make amends but those people to whom we begrudgingly made amends. Even those to whom we were never going to make amends. This process changes us. We start to feel that freedom and happiness talked about in the “Promises” along with other sustained good feelings. Why would we want to mess with that? Why would we want to hold on to our “old ideas” and allow ourselves to become distressed or upset? It happens because we’re human and because people do things to us about which we would like to retaliate or get angry.

Step Ten in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions says that anger is the “occasional luxury of more balanced people.” We can’t manage anger, justifiable or not. We cannot deal with being upset for an extended period of time. It destroys us. It diminishes us. It creates resentment. It creates our acting out in inappropriate ways. It unleashes our character defects. More often than not, it creates our hurting other people in ways that will assuredly require an amend.

This process isn’t bulletproof. We don’t have carte blanche to go out and do anything we want because we can do a Step Nine or a Step Ten. That’s not what it means at all. When we’re admitting wrong, we’re saying we’re not going to practice this behavior anymore. And every time we admit we’re wrong, we’re working towards not doing it again. So if we’re coming to this Step with the same behavior repeatedly, it behooves us to look at that behavior and figure out what advantage we are getting out of acting this way. Because if it isn’t doing something for us, why are we doing it?

There are as many descriptions of Step Ten as people in the program in terms of how they practice this Step themselves. So you hear many different explanations on how to practice this Step in meetings where the group is talking about this Step. This is especially true in October.

The chapter in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions dealing with Step Ten contains a significant sentence that, when fully understood, allows us to take ourselves to task about how we react to things. It says, “It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.” The brilliance of that statement is not only how true it is but how true it is for alcoholics and addicts. When it comes to “being upset, we don’t own that emotion, but we certainly can make an art form out of “being upset.”

This sentence may have put this Step at a much higher level than previously believed. It says that I am somehow the one who is at fault, even when I may think I’m not the one at fault. The truth is, if I’m the one who’s upset, then it behooves me to find out why in the hell I’m upset? It probably has nothing to do with the actions of someone else and everything to do with how I react to their actions.

Today, I rarely feel the need to go back and admit a wrong to someone I’ve hurt as I’ve gotten out of the business of running roughshod over other people. Instead, I’m working on being reasonable and understanding. This doesn’t mean that in my head, I don’t run through all the various ways that this individual could die, and I not be blamed for it. But, of course, even that is as much a “wrong” as if I had actually done something directly to the person.

A key element in taking the personal inventory is to look at where we are wrong. Not where another person is wrong. Not where the other person should have behaved a certain way but where we are wrong. I’ve discussed this Step with many people and have often explained that many times I have admitted, I was wrong even when a part of me doesn’t believe it. I do that today because it makes life easier. If a person feels they need somebody to admit they’re wrong, and I happen to be that somebody, I can accommodate them. The harmony this brings to life is far greater than the argumentation and warfare about who’s right or who’s wrong may bring. I’m not interested in winning an argument if it means winning a night on the couch or maybe even outside the house. Those are the kinds of arguments nobody wins. There are no winners in arguments with emotional baggage and behavior stuck to them rather than anything important or earth-shattering.

The Step Ten chapter of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions is a manual on navigating day-to-day life. Anyone who reads that chapter and can assimilate what it says into their daily actions will find their lives profoundly altered. It’s not easy stuff. It’s just simple stuff.