Practice Perspective

I read an article recently about dying people and what they revealed to caretakers in their final days. None of them ever wished they had spent more time at work. Instead, they wished they had spent more time with family and friends. Some also indicated something along the lines of, “I always did what everyone else expected of me, and I never did what I wanted for myself.” If you lived your life that way, then you would have missed out on so much. It made me think of the repressed English butler Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day.

As a member of the Alcoholics Anonymous organization, I pick up a chip each year to recognize another year of sobriety and to let others in the program see that the 12-step recovery program works. The chip has two sides. One side has the serenity prayer, and the other side has the motto: “To thine own self be true.” It also has the three pillars of AA: Unity, Service, and Recovery. I feel like the message about being true to yourself is an important one about making choices that reflect who we really are. We need to be known, and we need to be confident. Interestingly, some of my favorite mentors in AA are confident and humble. These terms are not contradictory.

When we do recovery the right way, then I definitely get the feeling that we’re all in it together. I have found that I made an absolute trainwreck of my life in my heavy drinking days. Once I put the plug in the jug, I worked the 12-steps of AA with a sponsor. My life has improved dramatically. I was lucky to also find the North Carolina Lawyer Assistance Program early in my recovery. As a volunteer attorney with the organization for many years, I have seen NC LAP save lives and save careers. It is always a pleasure for me to be of service, and I think that service is the single most important part of recovery for me. It works when other things don’t. But I’m also glad of the reminder on an AA chip: “To thine own self be true.” It’s mentioned right there on the chip with Unity, Service, and Recovery. They must all go together, so let’s pay close attention to those ideas and be authentic in our recovery so we don’t look back on a life filled with regret.