At the clubhouse, though, all I could do was smile graciously at everyone around, cheerily reassure some new wretch from my lofty eminence of ten sober months, and chin a bit with other seedy statesmen. I even, for the first time, sprang for several cups of coffee.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, however, no one mentioned the vacant chairmanship. So, finally, I brought it up over coffee after the meeting. “Isn’t it too bad about J.?” I brightly blurted.
Only one old-timer paid attention. His look seemed to probe uncomfortably close to my deepest secrets, but his voice was kind as he said, “Well, just because J. got drunk doesn’t mean you have to drink.”
The idea was so breathtaking, I just shut up.
But my mentor continued, “You see, we’ll get somebody else to do J.’s job. We rotate chores around here, you know. There’s really no honor connected with AA offices or titles, just work. And it’s often dirty work at that.”
Although our Twelve Traditions had not yet been put into words, the truth, the spirit, and the sense of our Traditions was guiding those who helped me.
The shattering of my fantasy of eminence in AA was one lesson in what was to become our Second Tradition: that AA has no bosses. And that fact, only slowly learned, even more reluctantly accepted, but finally embraced, is greatly responsible for my sobriety. To stay sober, I had to learn that I could not be a boss in AA, no matter how much I wanted to or tried to.
There had been an earlier lesson on the obverse of that truth: that no one in AA could boss me, either. Upon discovering, my very first day in AA, that there was no place to sign up, no formal rite to initiate or mark me as a “member,” I had asked with puzzlement, “But how will you know if I stay sober?”
“We won’t,” I was told. “But you will.”
My first AA conversation had been an ever-increasing series of shocks, but this was almost too much. No one would check up on whether I had a drink or not! I felt relief, coupled with mild twinges of panic (was it possible for me not to get drunk unless something or someone forcibly prevented it?) and wry anger (dammit, this was a dirty trick! Why wouldn’t “they” give me some magic thing to keep me safe?).
“No one in AA tells us what to do, or scolds us for not doing it,’’ my first AA friend had explained.
Now, twenty-five years later, I am convinced that, as much as anything, that truth about AA heated up my determination to belong to the Fellowship.
But appreciation of the truth did not spring forth full-grown. To whittle down an egotism like mine takes years (It still sprouts unexpectedly, sneakily) and many experiences similar to my short-lived dream of the AA “presidency.” If I never became a power and a glory in AA, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Just a few months later, I actually did become chairman of a new, small group. I summoned “my” other officers to a meeting and informed them of the new organization and the new rules that I was setting up. And in a few days I got drunk.
In fact, I remember the preparation of written bylaws for four separate groups in New York City in the 1940s. We just did not trust each other or our successors. Each of those “business” sessions for framing such documents, as you no doubt suspect, was a comedy that could have been titled Full Moon Over the Madhouse. The records of our labors have long since disappeared, but the groups did survive and now flourish beautifully without such appurtenances. Also surviving is a lesson that can be drawn from this experience: Those who did not get their way in the squabbles over laws frequently got drunk, and some of them did not survive.
I truly believe that our Second Tradition, like all the others, is important for my individual survival, as well as for that of every AA group and our Fellowship as a whole.
At still another time in my life, I was again chosen to be chairman of a group, after serving some apprenticeships. On the night of the election (no one else wanted the job), despite my previous experience as a chairman, I was enormously moved. I felt very happy and even proud to receive from my group something that felt like an honor.
Big deal! At the very next meeting, the entire group turned on me. It was not personal, you understand. It was just that the coffee was too weak that night and the meeting had run overtime.
In every single AA job, I have received gripes and criticism; yet it has been rewarding to learn to listen to criticism, to evaluate it, to use it or reject it, and then to go on doing the job the best I could. In all honesty, I can say there were some pats on the back, too. But I did learn that, no matter what AA title I might briefly hold, I had absolutely no authority over any AA member. And, of course, no AA member, group, committee, office, or board has any authority whatsoever over me or any other member. (It has to be love, not government, that keeps AA stuck together.) This has the effect of keeping us all on one level in AA, and makes brotherhood easier than it would be if some of us were higher, others lower. I have at last come to like the fact that for AA purposes the final authority is a loving God (whatever concept of a benign Greater Power that word may represent to each of us) as expressed in the consensus of us all.
Suppose it were otherwise. Suppose we had layer upon hierarchical layer of drunks scrambling for higher and higher rungs of AA power and fame. Suppose we had to elect representatives to sit in some governing body (instead of our strictly advisory councils—intergroup committees and the General Service Conference). Or what if we had to choose a national president!
Can’t you just hear the nominating speeches and electioneering slogans? Can’t you just hear the debates? Can’t you just hear sobriety groaning under the strain, then the ice in the glasses, the cans and corks popping, and the sound of mass DTs that would surely result?
Fortunately, AA never puts us under such stress, thanks to our Second Tradition. Two things about the group conscience, however, still bother me. One is the fact that the Tradition does not say an informed group conscience. Once, we discussed all evening just what kind of quarters our central office should move into. Not one of us had ever searched out or tried to lease office space. Another time, we went on and on about procedures for electing regional members of AA’s General Service Board, but only two people in the room had ever read The Third Legacy Manual (now revised and titled The AA Service Manual). If we had been better informed, our group decisions would probably have been wiser.
The other thing about group conscience that has given me trouble is the discovery that it does not always agree with me. After quite a few such ego-wounding differences, I had to admit that the group conscience could manage without me, but that I needed it—just as we say about AA.
Finally, one more thing about this Tradition troubles me, and that is the word “trusted.” I cannot do all the Twelfth Step jobs that I’d like to do and that need doing in my town and around the globe. But surely I can support, with loving trust, those at Intergroup and GSO who do help to make AA’s reach citywide and worldwide. The committees that arrange conventions or banquets, meeting programs, or group anniversaries also deserve confidence. If I am not doing any of the work, the least I can contribute is trust in those who are.
Vice versa, if any AA job is entrusted to me, especially a Twelfth Step call, I will do the best I can, especially if the person is a sick newcomer who has just come to us. For in this way I maintain my own recovery. If we cannot trust each other, as our Second Tradition suggests, who on earth can we trust?
B.L., New York, N.Y.
The Whisper of Humility
March 1955