Made a List

TWELVE STEPS

AND

TWELVE TRADITIONS

STEP EIGHT

"Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all."

(p. 77)

Steps Eight and Nine are concerned with personal relation. First we take a look backwards and try to discover where we have been at fault; next we make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have done; and third, having thus cleared away the debris of the past, we consider how, with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may develop the best possible relations with every human being we know.

~

I balked thinking, "Why dig up the past… isn't it enough that I admitted the exact nature of my wrongs as I did in the Fifth Step?" Can't I start afresh and behave accordingly to these principles from now on? After all, I am no longer obsessed with drinking and, for the most part, I try my best to cause no harm to others. Why then ought I expose myself to further rejection from folks who probably don't even know about some of my past shenanigans? If I just let them slide, I can simply forget the past and live in the present… can't I?

Perhaps, but Step Eight simply asks me to make a list. In making this list I draw from what I've already worked on in the Fourth and Fifth Steps. In making that list I ought to see a pattern that helps me become willing to trust my Higher Power on this one. If my aim is to authentically live in the present I have to address the harm I have done to those who have loved me… to those I have loved… even to those I have despised!

A very important part of this accounting is the recognition that there may, or may not, be a resolution… a mending… restoration of deeply harbored divisions and disputes with family, friends and adversaries. It is, however, imperative that I try to look objectively… to simply list them without immediately considering how they will be resolved. Very often the person I imagined to have hated me had no such feelings whatsoever but mistook my avoidance out of guilt, fear or remorse, for contempt.

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geo 4,802