Endigar 668 ~ No Regrets
From the Daily Reflections of January 14;
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 83)
Once I became sober, I began to see how wasteful my life had been and I experienced overwhelming guilt and feelings of regret. The program’s Fourth and Fifth Steps assisted me enormously in healing those troubling regrets. I learned that my selfcenteredness and dishonesty stemmed largely from my drinking and that I drank because I was an alcoholic. Now I see how even my most distasteful past experiences can turn to gold because, as a sober alcoholic, I can share them to help my fellow alcoholics, particularly newcomers. Sober for several years in A.A., I no longer regret the past; I am simply grateful to be conscious of God’s love and of the help I can give to others in the Fellowship.
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Recovery opened the door to a world without polarized thinking for me. Polarized thinking is where all knowledge and experience is divided into “Good and Evil.” The logical conclusion of this kind of thinking is that people are also defined as good or evil, and I develop an “us and them” approach to those around me. It feeds my isolated selfishness, my disconnected self glorification.
Rather than seeing the world as Good and Evil, I am being taught to see it as an opportunity for a Useful Change in Perspective or Wasteful Embrace of Futility. In this new paradigm, even my ugliest past can become something beautifully useful. And rather than identify other’s in my life as “evil,” I search for a more useful idea and called them sick like me. My approach to others is to seek ways to connect and be useful or helpful.
Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, “This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 67).
Daily Reprieve 
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