If You Need Help With That Speck In Your Eye, Allow Me
[First published August 1, 2018]
I miss Jeff. We worked down the hall from each other until a brain tumor or something forced him to quit and move back home to western Pennsylvania. We graduated the same year from high schools just a few miles apart, and both found our way to Rohm and Haas in Louisville. I visited him once at his home in Zelienople when he was sick. Not long after, I drove 450 miles to attend his funeral there.
Jeff told me something I will always remember. The lesson seems clear to me now, but it took a while to sink in. My recovery from alcoholism has helped me hear his words more clearly.
He stood in my office door one day and told me that what we say about other people tells more about us than it does about them. I don't remember how the conversation evolved to that point. But he said if we say someone is lazy, for example, that doesn't mean he is. That just means that is our opinion and our opinion only. It tells the listener that we fear laziness in ourselves. If we say someone is boastful, the real reason we think so may be that he is stealing the spotlight from ourselves and our own bragadociousness. (Do you like that word?) After all, he should get out of his self-made spotlight and give someone more deserving like me a chance to shine.
The Bible tells us to remove the plank from our own eye before we try to remove the speck in someone else's. The Big Book, in my favorite personal narrative in the back, uses sarcasm to deliver the same admonition. On page 417 of "Acceptance Is the Answer:"
"Shakespeare said, 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.' He forgot to mention I was the chief critic. I was able to see the flaw in every person, every situation. And I was always glad to point it out, because I knew you wanted perfection, just as I did. AA and acceptance have taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us; that we are all children of God and we each have a right to be here."
Higher up on the same page, "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."
Sobriety, I hope, is helping me see others as God's handiwork. What gives me the right to find fault in what God has made? A.A. meetings help remind me of this. Everyone in the rooms is different from me. Different, not better and not inferior. We all are fighting the same disease. We all are trying to get that splintery plank from our own eyes so we can accept others as they are, not as we think they should be.
I miss Jeff. We worked down the hall from each other until a brain tumor or something forced him to quit and move back home to western Pennsylvania. We graduated the same year from high schools just a few miles apart, and both found our way to Rohm and Haas in Louisville. I visited him once at his home in Zelienople when he was sick. Not long after, I drove 450 miles to attend his funeral there.Jeff told me something I will always remember. The lesson seems clear to me now, but it took a while to sink in. My recovery from alcoholism has helped me hear his words more clearly.
He stood in my office door one day and told me that what we say about other people tells more about us than it does about them. I don't remember how the conversation evolved to that point. But he said if we say someone is lazy, for example, that doesn't mean he is. That just means that is our opinion and our opinion only. It tells the listener that we fear laziness in ourselves. If we say someone is boastful, the real reason we think so may be that he is stealing the spotlight from ourselves and our own bragadociousness. (Do you like that word?) After all, he should get out of his self-made spotlight and give someone more deserving like me a chance to shine.
The Bible tells us to remove the plank from our own eye before we try to remove the speck in someone else's. The Big Book, in my favorite personal narrative in the back, uses sarcasm to deliver the same admonition. On page 417 of "Acceptance Is the Answer:""Shakespeare said, 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.' He forgot to mention I was the chief critic. I was able to see the flaw in every person, every situation. And I was always glad to point it out, because I knew you wanted perfection, just as I did. AA and acceptance have taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us; that we are all children of God and we each have a right to be here."
Higher up on the same page, "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."
Sobriety, I hope, is helping me see others as God's handiwork. What gives me the right to find fault in what God has made? A.A. meetings help remind me of this. Everyone in the rooms is different from me. Different, not better and not inferior. We all are fighting the same disease. We all are trying to get that splintery plank from our own eyes so we can accept others as they are, not as we think they should be.
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