I recall hearing an Aboriginal woman on a tape who said she woke up one morning in a treatment centre and thought that God made a mistake. She said it took her some time to realise that God doesn't make mistakes and she is pretty much where she should be with the people she should be with. I said the Serenity Prayer a lot when new, whenever I got a bit of stress and couldn't run off to a meeting right away. I suppose it was more a mantra than a prayer then as I was pretty confused about the God part at the start of it, but it reminded me that whatever made me start saying it was almost always something that had just happened that I couldn't do anything about. I am more content when I can accept just about everything, but this prayer doesn't say I should when there are things I can, and should, change. For example, I have run across some members who see a slip as a sort of unavoidable accident that happens simply because they are alcoholics. I believe that I will stay sober if I keep doing certain things. If I keep doing them, staying sane and sober can appear to be easy and I might forget that this is only because of what I am doing to maintain my sobriety, but I now enjoy doing these things so much that I suppose it doesn't really matter all that much why I am doing them, as they seem to have become enjoyable habits and there seems to be little danger that I might stop and let the world turn rotten again. When I was new, I had a student in my homeroom class who kept getting in trouble for being a rebel in a rather strict Catholic high school. His mother came to see me and said she told him to stand up for himself. My reply may have been wiser than I was at the time. I said that I was learning that some battles were worth fighting and some weren't. A supermarket connected to the local K-Mart here was recently expanded and a sign was put in the alley behind it saying that, because of construction, it was closed to pedestrians, and it remained there long after the construction was finished. I took it upon myself to complain in the name of downtrodden pedestrians. I have a car but seldom use it to get around town. After complaining a couple times and threatening to write a letter to the local paper, it finally hit me that the alley does belong to K-Mart and the supermarket and I guess they have the right to drive away business it they want to. |