A friend of mine blogged on face book this morning some of the things AA has been for him. He used some paradoxes to make his point. It reminded me of a story from The Second Edition of The Big Book of alcoholics Anonymous.The story was titled , “T he Professor and The Paradox”. I scrounged arround and found his story in the book Experience,Strength and Hope. In his story starting on page 151 the professor states as follows. ‘ A.A does not function in a way which people normally expect it to. For example, instead of using our “will power,” As everyone outside A.A., seems to think we do ,we give up our wills to a Higher Power, place our lives in hands invisible hands_strongerthan ours. Another example: If twenty or thirty of us real drunks getaway from home and meet in a club room downtown on Saturday night, the normal expectation is that all thirty of us will surely get roaring drunk, but it doesn’t work out that way, does it? Or talking about whiskey and old drinking days( one would normally think) is sure to raise a thirst, but it doesn’t work that way either,does it? Our program and procedures seem to be in many ways contrary to normal opinion. And so in connection with this idea, let me pass on what I consider the four paradoxes of how A.A. works.( A paradox ,you probably know already know ‘ is a statement which appears to be false,but which,upon careful examination’ in certain instances proves to be true.) This story should be important to my friend and myself because he taught English at The University of Alabama – we both went there.
The four paradoxes are; We surrender towin.We give away to keep. We suffer to get well. We die to live. We will talk more about these paradoxes tomorrow!
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