To make the world a friendly place One must show it a friendly face. I deserve to be happy and I am usually the person who is responsible for this happiness. If I’m worrying about something, I’ll suspend the worry and let myself be happy in spite of it. We deserve to be happy, but we must plant seeds of happiness by our thoughts and actions. Happiness is always in the direction of love and service, never in anything selfish. Did any of us ever meet a truly happy person who was totally self-seeking? Do we remember any happy, serene people among our drinking companions? Did any of our temporary successes and victories bring permanent happiness?ĪA experience gives us the answers we need.
Placing the overall responsibility for our lives in God’s hands is yet another route to happiness. Meeting our obligations to society and others contributes to personal happiness. Thinking and living rightly is a path to happiness. We deserve to be happy if we are doing the things that should bring happiness to ourselves and others. In a perverse way, we may be using unhappiness as penance for our past wrongs. If happiness is eluding us, the fault may lie in a peculiar guilt from our past. Somewhere in the course of living sober, we should realize that we can deserve to be happy. To gain enough humility and self-respect to stay alive at all, we had to give up what had really been our dearest possessions–our ambitions and our illegitimate pride. We had to take personal responsibility for our sorry state and quit blaming others for it. We had to quit the crazy contest for personal prestige and big bank balances. We had to toss the self-justification, self-pity, and anger right out the window. But we couldn’t get rid of alcohol unless we made other sacrifices. I pray that I may not be thrown off the track by letting the old selfishness creep back into my life. It is not so important any more, except as your experience can be used to help others who are in the same kind of trouble. After a while, it will not matter so much what happens to you. Gradually get away from yourself and you will know the consolation of unselfish service to others.
Think of other people and their troubles and you will forget about your own. When trouble comes, do not say: “Why should this happen to me?” Leave yourself out of the picture. Then they face the facts instead of making excuses for themselves. They take a personal inventory of themselves to see where they really stand. They face themselves and their problems honestly, instead of running away. They get honest with themselves and with other people. First, they recover their personal integrity. alcoholics find a way to solve their personality problems. Bob and myself, I gratefully declare that had it not been for our wives, Anne and Lois, neither of us could have lived to see A.A.’s beginning.Īm I capable of such generous tribute and gratitude to my wife, parents and friends, without whose support I might never have survived to reach A.A.’s doors? I will work on this and try to see the plan my Higher Power is showing me which links our lives together.
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