Truth is not ‘relative’, but the perspective on it differs for everyone.
I heard a speaker say some people stay in their shit because it's warm(er than the people around them).
Shit is like a blanket. People' just call it like it is' or callously say, 'It's the truth! You can't handle the truth!' 'Calling people on their shit' reminds me of snatching a blanket away from someone who, in their consummate wisdom (because they know precisely what the other person does and doesn't need), kicks their crutch or snatches the blanket away (and they freeze as a result). I think it was Melanie Beattie who told the blanket story in Codependent No More. It's been a long time since I read it, but it made sense to me.
I remember someone's Sponsor (venting?) in a meeting, saying he finally told his Sponsee to quit calling him because he doesn't do anything he is told to do anyway, and he's going to die from drinking. Yes, the Sponsee kept relapsing, calling from Detox, jail, and wherever. But our prescription is almost a prayer. When anyone, anywhere, REACHES OUT FOR HELP...we know the rest of it.
I mentioned in that very same meeting a metaphorical story about an obese man who was having a heart attack that called out to someone for help, but the person told him to F-off, saying he was warned for years that overeating might kill him and that he should have put down that last hamburger. Yes, the Sponsor was obese. I ain't judgin', I'm jis' sayin'. Another saying I heard in early recovery, was BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD, THERE GO I.
A saying I once heard in a meeting opened my heart. 'We don't shoot our wounded.' The Big Book generally reads that we should be hard on ourselves, not others. I also heard Oprah say that we should make our wounds our wisdom. Beating people over the head with truth is not why we are here.
It's a hard pill to swallow, but there is not anyone residing on Earth School that couldn't turn into a purely evil, toxic person, totally willing to kill or injure others. We can kill a person with a word if we aren't careful. It takes a lot of work not to be an asshole when we are upset, and the irony is that many of us don't know any better. But the "I didn't mean to" argument is useless if you drive drunk and kill someone. You have to mean NOT to do something. Given the worst life scenarios, maybe anyone could grow up to be a serial killer. Wounded people wound people. Healed people heal people.
Truth without compassion is cruelty. Attraction, not forcing solutions, is critical. If you like something I say, don't give me any credit. There is One who has all power, and it ain't me. If you turn your will and life over to the care of God, then you'll see and hear God everywhere. If you DON'T like something I say, take it up with God because God is why I'm still kicking it on Earth School. Thank God life ain't fair because if life were 'reasonable,' I'd still be in prison, be in a nuthouse, or be 6-feet under your feet and forgotten long ago.
Like the line of a 70's movie, "Hang up the blame thrower." I LOVE THAT THIS SAYS GROWTH STARTS WHEN WE TIRE OF OUR OWN SHIT (we're taking our own inventory). I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and quit drinking. People in The Rooms loved me back to health. Go where the love is.
