The holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, falls on the 10th day of the month of Tishrei, following Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which occurs ten days earlier. This year the Day of Atonement fell on Friday, October 7, beginning at sundown. This Wednesday, at daybreak, I will wake up with 365 days of continuous sobriety behind me. Are these two events related? Most definitely. Yom Kippur is at its very core about reflecting on the transgressions of the past year as well as making amends with anyone who wronged you or whom you had wronged. It is about letting go of old grudges and asking for forgiveness, respectively. The 4th Step in AA calls for a fearless and thorough inventory of your life, leading in the 8th and 9th Steps to making amends, or retribution, with persons whom you have wronged – except when to do so would harm those or others. In the 10th Step, we are told to continue taking inventory and promptly admitting when we are wrong. In other words, clean house and keep it clean. In this way, one stays spiritual fit.
On the surface there seems to be complete concordance. The only hair splitting issue is that in Judaism when one is a victim, say, of embezzlement, you are expected to forgive that person (the embezzler) even though it seems like it ought to be the other way around. In AA it is proposed that nothing occurs in a vacuum - we always need look at our complicity in all social equations. We are neither innocent bystanders, nor inert entities.
It's certainly easier to blame others for our troubles than to take a long, hard look at ourselves. Such was the case with this writer.
On the 22nd of September of last year, I was laid off from a good paying job. Whereas, on the surface, it would seem to had been bad news, it was really a blessing in disguise. Having begun as a dream job, over the passage of time my work environment became increasingly intolerable, even some days, a living hell. Relieved as I was, though, upon essentially being granted what I had wished for, it would have been easy enough for me to also also have harbored a vehement hatred toward my ex-boss, who in my opinion was a two-faced, insincere, snake-in-the-grass, conniving son of a bitch (a little bitter, are we?)
My employee folder will forever provide incontrovertible evidence of a downward-spiraling employee. A far different story, though, would've unfolded had the reality of my alcoholism been revealed to my superiors before things got to be so unmanageable. It would have explained things. Instead, the worst things got, the more I drank. The more I drank, the worst things got. A quagmire of my own making. I drank to deaden the the pain. I deadened the pain to forestall the inevitable, ultimate truth.
My great grand-sponsor, Jerry, upon hearing me share my workplace experience in a meeting. recommended I make amends to my ex-boss. That I should apologize for not having been the employee he was paying me to be. At first, this seemed so preposterous and counter-intuitive I dismissed it out of hand. Now, two days shy of receiving my one year medallion, I'm not so sure.
God works in mysterious ways, don't he?
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