Everybody wants to be somebody, nobody wants to grow, wrote Goethe. I ask myself sometimes, as we all do: Who am I? Where am I? Where am I going? What’s it all about? The learning and growing process is usually slow. But eventually our seeking always brings a finding. What seem like great mysteries often turn …
On studying the Twelve Steps of Recovery, many of us as newcomers to Gamblers Anonymous exclaimed, What an order! I can’t go through with it. Don’t be discouraged, we’re told at meeting after meeting. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is that we …
For a considerable period of time after I reached Gamblers Anonymous, I let things I couldn’t do keep me from doing the things I could. If I was bothered by what a speaker or other people said, I retreated, sulking, into my shell. Now, instead of being annoyed or defensive when someone strikes a raw …
I’ve heard it said that when God closes a door, He opens a window. Since I started working the Twelve Steps of Recovery, much of the fear and pain that haunted my life is gone. Some of my defects have been lifted from me, though I’m still wrestling with others. I believe that if I …
When a man has reached a condition in which he believed that a thing must happen when he does not wish it, and that which he wishes to happen can never be, this is really the state called desperation, wrote Schopenhauer. The very real pain of emotional difficulties is sometimes very hard to take while we’re …
It’s still not exactly a piece of cake for me to accept today’s occasional pain and anxiety with any great degree of serenity, but I’m increasingly able to be thankful for a certain amount of pain. In the Gamblers Anonymous Program, we find the willingness to do this by going over the lessons learned from past sufferings—lessons …
In every story we hear from others in Gamblers Anonymous, pain has been the price of admission into a new life. But our admission price purchased far more than we expected. It led us to a degree of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain. And, in time, we began to …
When I see new members come into Gamblers Anonymous, I am reminded first of the pain and the unmanageable mess I found myself in, and then the hope I felt once I became willing to accept the Gamblers Anonymous Program. When I see and hear the Old Timers, some with twenty years or more in …
We learn from others in Gamblers Anonymous that the best way to deal with painful situations is to meet them head on, to deal with them honestly and realistically, and to try to learn from them and use them as springboards for growth. Through the GA Program and our contact with a Higher Power, we …
No one welcomes pain with open arms, but it does have its uses. Just as physical pain serves as a warning that we may be suffering a bodily illness, so can emotional pain be a useful sign that something is wrong—as well as a warning that we need to make a change. When we can …