April 9
Who Had to Wait
When we remember our drinking, the dramatic incidents tend to come first. The quiet afternoons are harder to see: somebody waiting for us, making an excuse on our behalf, or changing plans because we had become unreliable. Nothing happened that would make a striking story. Another person simply had less freedom because they could not count on what we had said.
Step Eight invites attention to those quieter effects. We may have measured harm by how much trouble we caused openly and missed the arrangements other people made around us. Recognizing their effort need not become an exercise in imagining every possible injury. It asks for a more careful look at what we actually know. The person who seemed endlessly accommodating may have been carrying a cost we rarely noticed, partly because they worked so hard to keep it from disrupting everything else.
Whose quiet accommodations made my behavior easier for me to overlook?
Their lost afternoon mattered too.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step Eight, pp. 80–81.