September 6
Who Else Is Affected?
Our group wants to make a change, and someone says it is nobody else's business. Often that is fair enough. But suppose the change affects another meeting's access to the building, or our announcement gives outsiders the impression that we speak for all of A.A. The boundary of our decision may be wider than the room in which we vote.
Tradition Four joins freedom with regard for other groups and the Fellowship as a whole. Considering those effects does not mean asking permission for every ordinary choice. It means taking an honest interest in consequences beyond our own convenience. We may need a conversation with people who will inherit part of the difficulty. Their perspective can reveal something our enthusiasm missed. A decision is more genuinely our responsibility when we are willing to hear from those who will have to live with it.
Who might experience the consequences of a choice that feels entirely ours to make?
Their meeting matters alongside ours.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Tradition Four, pp. 146–147.