Life is Short

Thursday, October 10, 2013:

FIXING ME, NOT YOU

If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also.

Twelve steps and twelve traditions, P. 90

What a freedom I felt when this passage was pointed out to me! Suddenly I saw that I could do something about my anger, I could fix me, instead of trying to fix them. I believe that there are no exceptions to this axiom. When I’m angry, my anger is always self-centered. I must keep reminding myself that I am human, that I am doing the best I can, even when that best is sometimes poor. So I ask God to remove my anger and truly set me free.

DAILY REFLEXTIONS, p. 292

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Doing something about anger takes discipline but it works better than otherwise. There are just too many loose cannons careening over the decks of the collective consciousness and it does absolutely no good for me at all to add my confusion to the mess. Life is incredibly short… far too short to twist myself into a knot over offenses, real or imagined. I do, however, wish that the word, wrong, would be exchanged for the term, error, in our literature. Right and wrong are strong words and ought to be used more judiciously. It is important to me that I assign no unnecessary guilt towards a thorough inventory. The key word is “unnecessary”. When going through the day I can slip into damned near uncontrollable anger and I blow up on people I sincerely care about. I believe that it is my priority to free myself from any defect of character that stands in the way of the Heart of Compassion from shining through my actions but that is sometimes far too high of a bar to set for myself. Being somewhat of a perfectionist, I am apt to beat myself to a pulp if my actions don’t meet my goals. Thus, perfectionism can lead to painting myself into a corner where my options are to say fuck it and, either justify or quit altogether, the pursuit of a transcendent happiness because of failure. The idea here is to free myself from the bondage of self and not get tangled up in crap I have no business of trying to master on my own.

geo 5,501