I’m grateful for coffee on the balcony. I’m grateful for seeing something new. I’m grateful for having new defaults. I’m grateful for evenness in my thinking. I’m grateful for letting things go. I’m grateful to be sober today.
We had a really interesting discussion last night at the “Anyone Anywhere” Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.1 We were reading the second half of “How it Works” and discussing the Fourth Step and of course anger and resentments. I chafe a bit at the Big Book’s instruction that
If we were to live, we had to be free from anger
Big Book, p. 66
I hate it when people tell me to do shit like that. Of course, to pound that home, Bill makes the snotty pronouncement that anger was “poison,” and that “poison,” “the dubious luxury” of the normal, would lead me to drinking.
And with us, to drink is to die
It’s exactly those kinds of very valid pronouncements with very real consequences that bring out the most pirate-y elements of my character. Please don’t tell me what to do. You see, I’m smarter than the average bear and I can usually figure out a way around the rules that everyone else has to follow, or come up with a pretty convincing and maybe even heartfelt apology in the event that “my way” gets discovered or doesn’t work out. One of the central self-lies of alcoholism and addiction is the idea that “nothing too bad has really happened yet.” The close calls, the times we get caught with no apparent consequences, slide off our alcohol-slickened backs.
Landing in the bar the next day is proof we got away with yesterday.
Except we didn’t. Unfortunately, as is true with lots of other stuff in life, those seemingly un-felt, non-consequences are sneakily cumulative, think plaque in an artery (to use an example near and dear to my heart).2 Eventually, there are consequences. Trust me on this.
I think the same is true for anger and resentment. I get angry a lot. I have expectations for people that are often unmet. Things happen that I don’t think should have. Things happen that I don’t like. Waiters don’t bring the bill exactly when I want it. The people down the hall always let the clangy trash chute door spring close. Someone is walking too slowly or standing on the left side of the escalator.
You get the idea and I’m pretty sure this is not an example of my terminal uniqueness. Those pesky instances of anger are more manageable these days. For me, reading the Big Book and working the Steps has produced tranquility and ease in me. When I get riled up, instead of spiraling into a glass of white wine (or three bottles), I have a budding ability to breathe, step away mentally, step away literally, and let the next surge of nonsense coursing through the synapses wash the irritants away. Taking a long, aggressively fast walk and seeing something like this usually does the trick:
Or dogs. But then there are bigger things. Things like broken hearts or dreams that didn’t happen or even way more significant, really bad stuff. I feel angry then, too, and there’s often a pretty good reason for it. I’ve been reminded many times in therapy that anger is often an expression of fear and it serves a purpose as a protective emotion. At the same time, it’s apparently a destructive toxin for an alcoholic like me. That leads to a fairly difficult balancing act, a pretty tight needle to thread.3
That’s what we were talking about last night. And someone really smart said something really smart and insightful: The application of empathy seemed to help with feelings of anger. I thought that was jaw-dropping as it was said. To be sure, it’s not a novel concept, the commands to “turn the other cheek” and “pray for one’s enemies” are covertly designed to prompt the application of empathy. As I thought about that, it made perfect sense, empathy is really a big part of the answer for anger.
When I’m angry, one of aggravating factors is the extent to which I think things were aimed at me. When someone bumps into me on the subway, I might get annoyed, but I won’t take it as an attack on me made necessary by some defect in character evident to my fellow subway rider. No, they’re just clumsy and not paying attention. When someone does something that hurts me, the question of intent matters. Empathy is the answer there, too. Maybe that person did what they did because it was the best they could do. Maybe they even knew it wasn’t going to be good enough and got defensive about it. The old me put that evidence of intent into plastic bags, marked it with an exhibit sticker and piled it up with all of the other evidence I had amassed about how people weren’t to be trusted.
People always let you down.
In that respect, anger did serve as a protector. It protected me from an increasingly wide array of human connection. It protected me from meaningful relationships. It protected me from all of those good things that go along with a willingness to tolerate a little bit of unpleasantness. Empathy is the answer, and that includes empathy for myself. When I apply the empathy filter, it’s hard to not start seeing things differently. I see a fuller picture of the situation and the characters. My perspective has shifted, from the singular me-focus of the alcoholic to more of an observer, just trying to get my lines right when it’s my turn. I usually see that whatever happened, it wasn’t really about me.
Empathy also helps with the upstream antecedent of anger: fear. When they try to figure out why babies cry, surprisingly, a lot of the time it’s because they’re pissed off. Now, I’ve been around a lot of babies and not sure I’ve met any truly angry ones. But being a baby does involve a fair amount of vulnerability and trusting other people. When that diaper has been wet for a little bit, I don’t think the crying starts because it’s so terribly uncomfortable or an immediate crisis. It’s the fear of being ignored. Hey, are you not paying attention? This diaper is a freaking sponge! I don’ think that connection (maybe “reaction” is a better word), the one where I feel ignored, lost and alone, wondering where are the people I thought I could trust and then turn that fear into anger, has changed too awfully much since the early 1960’s to be honest.4
What has changed is my capacity to throw empathy into the mix, because doing that helps lessen the fear I feel. When I finally see that whatever it is that was angering me, which probably started out frightening me, is just a thing that happened, that it wasn’t a thing aimed at me or deliberately intended to hurt me, well, that lets me take a deep breath. It’s just a thing that happened, no one at fault, nothing to forgive. Maybe a lesson to learn, but that’s it and then the unpleasantness seems to drift on downstream.
Someone else at the meeting made the very, very astute observation that the key was not avoid anger, but to avoid staying in it. Put that together with the empathy thing and I think you’re on to something. No one can realistically hope to avoid feeling anger and fear and I’m not sure the point of the Program is to move to a world where those things don’t exist. If you really believe the stuff on page 417 about there being no mistakes in God’s world, then there’s a reason for that anger and hurt and fear and sometimes even despair.
I realize it’s the application of the empathy filter that helps me see that purpose. In turn, seeing that purpose helps me come to terms with whatever I’m feeling and before too long I’m weaving in and out of pedestrian traffic heading west on 86th street and listening to something groovy like this:5
I use the long form each and every time on purpose.
Thank you, I’m here all week.
Question: aren’t most needle “eyes” a pretty similar size? Isn’t the real variable the diameter of the thread?
Like Captain Crunch and Jon Steward, I’m also 60. Feel free to do the math.
I just re-discovered this gem, remember listening to it on the rear speakers in the way back of our swanky Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, and it is one hundred percent going on the songs about alcoholism playlist.