I was taught “patience, tolerance, love and understanding” were founding principles of our program. My sponsor taught me these principles through practical applications at meetings and interactions within the meeting rooms of AA. One of the toughest was tolerance and this is how he opened my eyes to my self-centered lack of tolerance.
When I first came into the program I was very restless and had a difficult time concentrating at meetings. If someone was sharing at a speaker meeting and I was bored or uninterested in their talk I would get up and go for coffee or stand outside and have a cigarette and talk to the guys until the speakers finished their talk. At a regular step meeting that I attended the format was a discussion of the step that included going around the table so that everyone had an opportunity to share. In fact everyone was expected to share. There was a member of this group named Dick who had suffered a lot of brain damage from alcohol and who was flat and dull in his affect and his speech patterns. Dick also seemed to have no concept of time. He droned on and on saying virtually the same things week after week.
After a couple of weeks of squirming around in my seat I came up with a plan. The meeting room was set up in such a way that you could leave the room and go outside and look in the window and see what was going on inside. For a number of weeks I would get up when it was Dick’s turn to speak and go outside and watch until he was finished with his extensive dull monologue.
My sponsor was vigilant in his attention to my program. Today I am very grateful for this attention and I realize that I probably would not have been able to stay sober without it but at the time it made me angry. One night at the step meeting he realized what I was doing and he called me on it. I told him that I could not stand the guy or what he shared and that I didn’t have to listen.
He told me something that I will never forget. He told me that some day that Dick may be the only example of the Big Book standing between me and a drink. He explained how he had almost drank once but at the last minute someone in his group ran into him just before he went in the bar. The person talked to him about recovery and headed off my sponsor’s relapse.
My sponsor explained that some of us are sicker than others but that we are all children of God and that we all shared the common problem and the common solution. Sometimes when others bore us or annoy us at meetings they are unknowingly teaching us “patience, tolerance, love and understanding”. These principles are the solution for our own ego deflation and allow us to get outside of ourselves long enough to get well.
Recently over twenty years after this lesson I watch as one or two people’s excessive sharing and seemingly pointless storytelling have disrupted the serenity of an entire group. In this area we don’t have to go very far to realize that “some are sicker than others” and that this is often manifested in dual addictions and mental illness. In our program we welcome all who have a desire to stop drinking and therefore must practice tolerance when their well intentioned but sometimes inappropriate sharing is annoying to us. Those of us with time can, when our turn to share arrives, gently steer the meeting back to a discussion of the solution rather than the problem.
I’ve heard it said that “there is a wrench for every nut in AA” and what I believe this to mean that although something you say may mean nothing to me it could be saving the life of the man or women sitting next to me. Who am I to judge this?
We must be careful not to judge, criticize or complain and realize at times “there but for the grace of God go I”. By judging others or tuning out when some people speak we may be cutting ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit because our Higher Power frequently speaks to us through others. It is real important to listen to the message and not to judge the messenger.
My sponsor long ago reminded me that that something that annoying guy Dick said that night might just save my life the next day. How could I hear it by standing outside and watching his lips move through the window?