You don't have to go to very many meetings to hear about being powerless. It is in the first step, after all. It's the first thing we admit to ourselves: we're powerless over our addiction--whatever that addiction is. When I take sponsees through the steps, I throw in a little extra knowledge in there, the idea that we are powerless over anything we can't control--not just whatever it is we're hooked on. It's early training for practicing the principles in all our affairs.
A lot of people have a hard time with the idea of being powerless. They have yet to understand the amazing freedom that comes from letting go. Maybe their ego won't let them. Maybe it's fear that holds them back. Or maybe they're the victims of assault and have spent too many long years feeling powerless. I'm going to take the compassionate route, here, because my story is more like that last one than the first two.
I was having coffee a few weeks back and one the things we talked about were 'non-traditional' 12-step meetings. Meetings for folks that, for one reason or another, haven't found what they need in an AA or an NA group. There are Wiccan meetings, secular recovery meetings, all kinds. Even the rooms are supposed to be welcoming, too often they aren't.
It's an unfortunate truth that you can't find good Recovery in every room. There are the people who think they know all about the program just because they have a lot of time--even though haven't worked the steps. Know what that's called? Sobriety without Recovery--just being dry. I got news for you--just getting off of whatever you were hooked on is NOT Recovery. There are the people who proselytize like religious fanatics, who spend their entire shares telling the newcomers what to do. That's the exact opposite of Recovery; it's an attempt to control others and make them do what you think they should. Recovery is about letting go of all that. Then there are the cranky ones who think they're doing the newcomers a favor by reciting grim statistics about how small their chances are of staying sober.
Know what I say? Fuck all that shit. Even with all that insanity, it is possible to find a good room. A homegroup where people are loving, accepting. Where they talk about what they have done, how Recovery has benefited their life and the only instruction they give to newcomers is to keep coming back. How does all this relate to being powerless? We're powerless over other people. I can't make anyone work the program the way I think they should. All I can do is work the program as best as I can, contribute my experience, strength, and hope in meetings I think have good Recovery.
This idea, that I do have power over myself, is not something I was born with. It's not something I learned growing up, either. Life taught me that I was as powerless as a person could be. I had a talk with my sponsor once about it, just bemoaning the fact that I was so powerless, that no matter what I did life was always going to fuck me over. He chuckled (as usual), pulled me back from the edge, and told me to spend some time thinking about the things I do have power over. And rightly so.
I've been called 'powerful' before. It's not a term I like, but mostly because it's inaccurate. I always think of something Melody Beattie wrote once, about how if we align ourselves with God (or whatever name you give to the spiritual force greater than yourself), that power flows through us. I am not powerful, but God is and by aligning myself with his will for me instead of trying to run my life according to my own will, then that incredible force of spiritual energy flows through me.
Those of us who learned, either through some form of abuse or just general life experience, that we are powerless have a differently lesson to learn. Or, more specifically, to unlearn. We're not so different from the egoists on the other side of the spectrum who think they can control everything. It's all right there in the serenity prayer: 'the wisdom to know the difference' between the things we can control and those we can't. Some of us need to learn more of the letting go of things we can't control; some of us need to learn more of the responsibility for the things we can.
In some ways we are powerless. In others, we are more powerful than we can possibly imagine.
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