“The first step toward change is awareness.”— Nathaniel Branden
For some of us, it’s easy to think there’s a special group of alcoholics the book is talking about — guys in trench coats under bridges grasping a bottle. The real train wrecks. Or we read these pages like they’re describing a potential worst-case scenario of what could happen if someone kept drinking long enough.
Doing so, at this point something subtle is happening. We're quietly grading our own report card, giving ourselves a passing grade, and at the same time flunking others to make the curve go in our favor.
While we’re busy scratching out our own D and trying to turn it into a B, hoping it’ll get King Alcohol off our back, the book interrupts our familiar song and dance with an observation that’s about as comfortable as a dentist appointment without novocaine. Not about alcohol — about us.
This line lands differently when we stop reading it like fiction and start reading it like a mirror:
"Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, I think, is the root of my troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, I step on the toes of my fellows and they retaliate…"
Driven by fear. Self-delusion. Self-seeking. Self-pity. It’s not saying we were absolute monsters. It’s saying something simpler — and harder to admit.
We were the center of our own damn universe, and we usually don’t think so, but... everybody else can see it.
A lot of our decisions ran through the same filter: How does this affect me? What do I get out of this? Why are people doing this to me? And when life pushed back — when people retaliated or things fell apart — we started the blame game again...
They did this to me, so I did that.
Where do you catch yourself grading other people’s report cards instead of looking at your own?
