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I was halfway through a two-minute story the other day when someone interrupted me and asked me several questions that all indicated they had not been paying attention to the first part of the story.
But my story was so funny, and timely, and well told… what kind of jerk loses track of that story halfway through?
Then the truth hit me hard, as it regularly does: Most people are up their own asses, and a surprising number are VERY far up there.
Now, that probably sounds like an insult. But it is the truth, and it’s also semi-understandable—we’re animals whose instincts are all built around our survival. So yeah, our brains tend to filter things through the lens of how it affects us.
I’m not mad about it any more. I used to be. I used to want everybody to be like so many of my sober friends, who have warm hearts and open ears, with very little selfishness filtering into conversation. That’s just not how it is.
And before any old-timers start talking about how it’s really bad because of this young generation, or cell phones, or anything else, I was born in 1977 and I’m pretty sure people have always had their heads up their own asses. I do not believe that self-absorption was invented by millennials. It’s all of us, from the beginning of time to the end of time.
The point of this newsletter entry is not about changing other people. It’s about changing yourself. I need to change my mentality so that if someone doesn’t ask how my day was, or a friend doesn’t call me on my birthday, or umpteen other things happen where I am not the center of others’ attention, I need to take on the job of not being upset about it. That’s my role in any resentment about somebody else being stuck on themselves… and it’s a little late in this blog to say this but I will anyway: As hard as it is to believe, I can sometimes crawl up my own ass of self-importance, too!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS: “We don’t seem to give up a life of failure without a fight.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2003, Ms. Sam H. from Jacksonville, Florida)
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