How It Works: Empathy
Part III: Secret Agent Edition/ "Sorry, Fredo Must Die"
I’m grateful for mornings like this. I’m grateful for exciting opportunities. I’m grateful for maybe getting another plate appearance. I’m grateful for what I’ve learned and the people who taught me. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Will it be more Cap’n Crunch today? No. I’m a little sorry for that, and by “that,” I mean this:
If I inadvertently sabotaged diets, gave rise to budding thoughts of a sugary oblivion or just greased the slippery slope of “that was great, more would be better,” I’m sorry. I went overboard. hahaha. It’s like Dr. Strangelove’s hand, you just can’t keep it on the down low. No, I’m going to talk more about empathy because that’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot and I think it’s a critical and maybe under-appreciated aspect of sobriety.
Last week, I wrote about something brilliant one of the Sponsees said, that empathy was the antidote to anger. I’ve been thinking more about that and am coming to believe that maybe empathy is the secret sauce in the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous.1 Maybe “Secret Agent” is better than “Secret Sauce?” My own view is that the Steps and the Big Book contain a series of prompts, questions and exercises that somehow, maybe inadvertently, trigger this entire change in outlook, perspective and approach. For people who fit the definition of alcoholics and addicts, this change in outlook, perspective and approach somehow seems to diminish the formerly very keenly felt need for assisted temporary escape.
If one were to think of the Big Book as a classic “buddy” movie, one would know that one of the central plot elements is the death of the loyal, mostly-trusted friend. There’s usually a pretty complicated relationship that gets mostly resolved before the fiery, cinematic death.2 The buddy who has to die here is the ego:
Simple but not easy; a price had to be paid. it meant destruction of self-centeredness.
Big Book, p. 14
This is hard. Ego is who brung us to the dance and got us this far. The one who cranked up the radio when we were passing the many accident scenes. You know the bit about believing our lives were functions of self-propulsion. That is an expression of alcoholic ego and my alcoholic ego, the guy who was always in my ear telling me I wasn’t getting what I deserved or that other people were getting too much or that with a little more force this mf’er will finally bend. That alcoholic ego? I’m sorry, he’s got to die now. Empathy is the tough SOB who is going to finally put that beast down. You see, it’s simply not possible for the alcoholic ego to continue to function in a world bounded by empathy
He didn't go easily. That’s why I was such a special alcoholic, you couldn’t keep that guy in his box. It was kind of like this3:
Of course, he’s never really gone and that’s why we “live ten, eleven and twelve.”4 The thing is, I don't know that you can just command the alcoholically-inflamed ego to sit down or play dead. My budding view is that working the Steps, finding ways to replace the gooey-selfish center of life with meaning, purpose and service, triggers this whole magnetic-shifting of the poles and unleashes a storm of empathy that seems to do a pretty effective job of wiping out a lot of the vestiges of ego.
It works in kind of a painful, abrasive way sometimes. It's been very hard for me to sit with some of the historical incidents of my own pre-sobriety and think about how it must have felt for my kids to live through those same moments. What did my daughter really feel when she picked me up drunk from the IOP she had arranged to try and help me? Of course, powerful feelings like that are sticky. It’s hard to come to terms with the idea that when you hurt people, even when it wasn't intentional, well, sometimes the mark remains long after the apology.
Empathy, seeing things from the perspective of others, (note: very different than clucking at the perspective of others), seems to resolve anger and fear. It’s even pretty effective when applied to self-doubt. Empathy requires seeing that it usually isn’t about me, and probably could stand to be even a little less. Empathy is what lets me see how this Program works in others, which in turn, strengthens my own sobriety. Empathy was what let me see there just might be a Higher Power capable of helping me find the path and changing my life. Empathy, for myself and others, made it possible for me to recover.
According to the very excellent Anonymous Press Concordance to Alcoholics Anonymous, the word “empathy” does not appear a single time in the Big Book. That makes perfect sense, empathy is a crafty, stealthy ego assassin who doesn't like attention. I like to think of empathy as the secret agent of the Big Book, and this agent has but one primary purpose…5
Sorry, baby, it wasn’t personal, it was strictly business.
Or if you’re an old-time Big Mac person: It’s the “Special Sauce,” that comes right before “lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun.”
I guess I’m mostly thinking about “Guardians of the Galaxy,” but also “Lord of the Rings,” even “Brian’s Song.” And, we shall never speak of dog movies until someone makes one where the dog lives. That’s a boundary.
Also, have you ever tried to actually rack a shotgun one-handed that way. Ummmmm, that is pretty bad-ass. Even on an air-soft gun, that is hard.
A manner of speech in the very famous Atlantic Group AA Meetings.
Spies, detectives, you get the idea. Here’s the “Spies Like Us” episode of Breakfast with an Alcoholic :