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I was in the other room recently when my wife called her mom and they started talking. Her mom is weighing a big life change, which my wife supports and has been a part of for some time.
But her mom is reluctant. She keeps saying she is leaning that way but not quite ready. My wife has been steady and persistent in a reasonable way, in my humble opinion. But they keep having the same conversation over and over again and it’s not going anywhere. I think the conversation gets them both pretty riled up.
I was listening in on the conversation not because of the conversation itself, but because of how it applied to me and my life. I have always been a passionate person who thinks they’re right about most things. That can be big life changes, or a food item, or whether a sports team will win or lose. My opinions are very, very good—according to me!—and you should hear them. All of them.
That obviously has been an issue for me in recovery. When I first got sober, I’d meet someone new to 12-step programs who was still not convinced they had a problem, and I decided I would try to talk them into realizing that. Guess how that usually turned out? It took years before I truly came to believe that unless you think you have a problem, you can’t really get sober. It’s why I don’t know of too many interventions that ever worked—they usually involve loved ones trying to persuade people that they need help.
But even setting aside the recovery angle on talking people into things, when does that actually work? I hear people try to talk people into or out of voting for political candidates, and I remain fairly certain that happens about 0 percent of the time. Same with movies, TV shows, cars, floor tile, pants, you name it… we all like what we like, and most of us don’t really budge.
That’d be fine if there weren’t so many resentments caused by people trying to talk someone else into something. I’ve gotten into some unbelievably ridiculous arguments that put real strain on relationships over the years. I’ve picked fights with friends in the past about whether one athlete is better than another, and gotten bent out of shape at that person for not agreeing with me.
Well, I don’t want to live like that any more. It’s so silly. Most of my opinions do not matter to anybody other than me. And most of your opinions don’t really matter to me. So why try to stuff things down peoples’ throats?
I say this as someone who got pissed at his 10-year-old daughter last night for not trying a new kind of queso that I bought. She said she didn’t want queso, and I proceeded to give her a hard time for 10 straight minutes. So I still have some work to do, and I will keep an eye out if any meetings for Talking People Into Stuff Anonymous pop up in my area.
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:
Nervous about hearing his first Fifth Step, a young priest asked an older priest to sit in on the session. After the AA member had described a few of his experiences, the older priest motioned the young one to step out into the hall.
“Cross your arms over your chest and rub your chin with one hand, like this,” the older priest directed him. The young priest tried it.
“Good,” said the older priest. “Try saying, ‘I see. Yes, go on.’ And, ‘I understand. How did you feel about that?’”
The young priest complied. “Now don’t you think that’s a little better than slapping your knee and saying, ‘No way! What happened next?”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2000, Shirlene H. from Bountfiful, New Hampshire)
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