In our drinking careers, we became experts at humiliation. The stuff done in blackouts. Trying to slap Band-Aids on chaos. The alibis. The blame shifting. The broken promises. Constantly asking ourselves, how the hell did I end up here again?
Most of us didn’t need anyone to humiliate us. We handled that just fine ourselves. In AA, we get an antidote for humiliation: humility. That’s a very different thing. Humiliation gets forced on us. Humility gets chosen.
When life gets confusing, when emotions start climbing, when we’re about three seconds away from popping off and making things worse, there’s a simple prayer: God, please show me how to handle this with humility before I am humiliated. And the answer is usually a shift in focus. Off of us. Off of being right. Off of what we think we deserve. Humility usually points us toward the other person, toward patience, toward asking how we can be useful instead of how we can win.
Then we pause. As long as we need to. Because most of our worst moments happened in the space between feeling something and reacting to it. God provides strength if we ask. Enough to get through the next right moment.
This has been written about through the ages, and AA explained it to us in a way we are coming to believe will work for us too. One day at a time. One moment at a time. One situation at a time, we are finally coming to believe.
When has trying to be right led straight to humiliation?
