NOTE: This is a visitor response to Gregg’s post, “I am powerless over people, places and things.”
It’s true I cannot control people that don’t want to change or listen and that I therefore become powerless over the way they choose to lead their lives at that moment in time. That it’s frustrating and possibly futile to repeatedly try and change these types. But, at the same time, small moments or simple comments can instantaneously create radical change after many years of failed attempts. Suddenly people can see things differently in moments of clarity, regimes change, institutions collapse, societies transform under persistent external influences.
Were it not for my sister’s long and emotionally torturous campaign to help me find sobriety I would almost certainly have been abandoned to a slow homeless death. I was incapable of helping myself, had no knowledge of AA, or alcoholism, and needed intervention of some sort, she was undoubtedly the catalyst that forced me to decided to seek change. A wealthy family gave up on a friend of mine, abandoned him to his fate, he had a stroke whilst homeless in downtown Los Angeles and has never recovered his full faculties. There’s a fine balance, but we’re certainly not always powerless over people, places and things.
We have been given the power to pass a message to other willing alcoholics and enable the process of transforming lives in and outside of the rooms. We have the potential power to heal great family rifts and traumas, if the family is open minded enough to see and hear the experience of better ways learnt from the collective wisdom of seventy five years of fellowship. Friends, associates, everyday people can be affected in all sorts of positive ways through our ever growing knowledge. We can influence other people, places and things in an affirmative way by our responses and actions, that’s one of the many gifts of sobriety.
Of course in many common situations it makes our lives easier to accept people, places and things as they are, adapt and respond accordingly in a positive way, realise we can’t always change things, especially right there and then. This is a very liberating and beneficial ethos towards life. To stop trying to always control matters, letting things happen in God’s way and time more and more, realising we’re usually not in charge of outcomes. This knowledge and way of living is very powerful. We can see direct and positive results taking place precisely because we don’t try to influence things, this we see as God’s work. But conversely things can become disastrous because of our inaction, we have a responsibility to help ourselves and others too.
If we were entirely powerless over people, places and things there would be no list of “persons we had harmed” in step eight and no healing amends to make in step nine. Alcoholics have plenty of stories about destruction brought on people, places and things – starting with car wrecks and broken homes. These are the negative aspects of how people, places and things are routinely affected by each others actions or inactions. But now we have been given the opportunity to change situations, which we didn’t have before.
We are, however, most certainly powerless over alcohol, if I pick up a drink. Other than that I have the fellowship, my higher power and a set of spiritual principals to protect me from it. The A.A. Big Book only once uses the word powerless within the basic text (p59) in the first line of step one itself, specifically, and only, in reference to our unique relationship to alcohol.
The phrase “I am powerless over people, places and things.” comes from the personal story “Acceptance was the answer.”
“When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life – unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.”
- (Big Book p417)
The personal stories come after the basic text in the Big Book and are clearly commented on in the beginning, page 29:
“Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God”
That is the purpose of the stories, there was no intent for them to be quoted as instruction, all be it a good and useful observation.
If we pass on this over simplified message, that we are powerless over people, places and things, we risk future members ducking the deeper soul searching heart work of recovery that is about confronting our disturbance and finding through difficult but enlightening experiences that acceptance is often but not always the key. If we make a decision to try and help people, change bad places and things, it’s can be gut wrenching, emotionally trying work that we might wish to avoid, especially if it affects our sobriety and peace of mind. But this harder path might be the more fulfilled journey from disturbance to serenity. We can find a deeper, more satisfactory place of acceptance, after exhausting all reasonable attempts to resolve issues, and truly sense the necessity to move on. Sometimes it’s good to never give up on a cause and dedicate ourselves to it, sometimes we enact great change, but it’s important we balance ourselves against what we want our lives to be about, how it affects others around us, our well being, and the importance of the cause.
We can attempt to change people, places and things that cause us disturbance “courage to change the things we can” but certainly not in a particular “moment” or set of circumstances where change is not possible “accept the things I cannot change”. I presume that’s why we pray for the “wisdom to know the difference”.
While understanding, with positive humility, that we can be powerless over people, places, and things in many situations, we also need to be careful we’re not avoiding challenges for our own selfish peace of mind. This can be seen to be promoted within other therapeutic processes. AA is founded upon the notion of the possibilities of profound change in ourselves and as a by product, but only possibly, in other people, places and things. We have been given the power to help people in and out of the rooms, and bring about change in unacceptable places or things, should we care to. Now that’s a wonderful gift and a message we really need to pass on.
Acceptance:
Sometimes, if not often, acceptance can only be achieved once clarity of mind has been firmly established through experience. The task of being able to able to perceive things as they actually are, not as we want them to be, can be long and difficult. Much as we can intellectually understand, or be told, that someone or something isn’t what we expect it to be, time and time again we will seek it to be what it is not in an emotionally deflating cycle. The persistence of these illusions within us is astonishing. It seems often, only thorough trial, emotional pain and finally experiential moments will be break through to total acceptance of things.
Wishing you all the best in recovery,
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