Do you want to be Special or Happy?

The answer to this question may be at the heart of life/work balance issues for many of us in the program. 

I was guided into AA by a couple of proverbial “Eskimos,”-AA lingo for unexplained coincidences that might otherwise be called divine intervention.  The first of these was when a high school classmate sat down next to me at a bar during an infrequent self-imposed abstinence period.  We both were drinking just tonic and lime, and he used this as an opening to disclose that he was in AA and that somehow spirituality had something to do with his sobriety.  Later, another Eskimo got me to my first meeting, “You know you’re not going to make it, don’t you” (referring to the fact that my next self-imposed period of sobriety would likely quickly end like the other just had). Then amazingly, a couple of months later, my high school buddy reappeared at my first meeting and promptly gave me a tour of the few other meetings in town at that time.  My identification with other members rapidly cemented my immersion into the local sober community.

After a couple of years of getting into our Society’s rhythm, I refocused on my career as a business-oriented insurance broker.  Unlike my previous work history-filled with hiccups and starts and stops- things just soared for me. I quickly climbed California’s insurance brokers to become number five out of eight thousand and nationally number 55 of over forty thousand. I even sported a countrywide reputation for combining in-depth technical knowledge with innovative marketing strategies.  I loved the national spotlight and access to the vaunted London marketplace-the home of “real” insurance.  With many trips to New York, Chicago, and London and ultimately a strong presence in Bermuda Insurance, I was away from home and three young kids, even missing family vacations in Michigan.

Later, after I sold my company, my career morphed into technology start-ups. Capitalizing on my insurance knowledge and connections, I polished up my badge of “Innovator.”  I increasingly focused on my “Specialness” and read extensively about innovators.  I operated with the assurance that my “calling” and corralling whatever talents I possessed in this area was the reason why God picked me out of the Flotsam and Jetsam stepping over the thresholds of AA.  Fortunately, I didn’t become the Bill Gates of insurance technology, in part because real technology innovation is just beginning to transform tradition bound insurance, and I was 20 years too early.

So, I had the benefit of some severe humbling.  Lately, I have very gratefully built up an unglamorous but satisfying expert witness practice leveraging all my previous travails.  I have recently become painfully aware of how, at odds, those years of Specialness were to creating and maintaining my spiritual development.

In entering the program, our central dilemma was a lack of power to stay away from the first drink.  It was not our strength but our weakness that was the driver behind finding a personal Higher Power.  It turns out that what He values most in our “turning our will and life over to his care” is the time every day he gets to spend with us and how he can give, and we can take his power and direction. It is not primarily our strength in which he is so interested-it’s our weakness. That is the inadequacy that provides us with open hands and hearts central to creating a proper relationship with Him.

So, the pursuit of Specialness always has at its core an element of one-up-man-ship. To be the favored child, you still must be better than the others.  And the insatiable anxiety behind that pursuit gives us no rest and only minimal time to be focused on others. And of course, not the least a quiet mind to be sensitive to what God’s will is for each day where true peace and happiness reside.  

So, I ask again, do you want to be Special or Happy?