Cheatin' Ways

Abstain from buying and selling and unfair ways of weighing and measuring.
 - Buddhist Quote 


Have you ever know someone that was spending more effort and time trying to figure out how to cheat and get an angle on things, by being deceptive or a cheat?

When I was a mere pre-teen, I recall having the brainiac idea that I didn't need to vacuum the house like I was supposed to, but rather, I could use a leaf rake to get the carpet to "fluff up" like it had been cleaned good and proper.

Guess what?

It didn't work.

I had to go do it right AFTER getting an earful. Imagine that?  AND It took twice as much effort, just to get it right.

My Cheatin' ways didn't pay off.  You can guess what I'll say next can't you? If you're going to take the time to do it, you might as well do it right the first time.  If you're serious about being sober, you're not going to be able to take short cuts.

Getting honest with ourselves is just the first step, and the rest of the steps don't matter if we don't get this one right.

We Don't Know!

"..We don't know what we don't know" 
- Donald Rumsfeld 

Some quotes that fall out of peoples mouths are just to good to pass up. No matter who the person is. This is one of those. And this one, just falls right into the rooms of recovery, and I think it's going to stick. 

Why? It's a silly truism. And it's dead simple. But then when you start thinking it over, and tossing it back and forth to the other members of our mental committees they all seem to agree that "Yea, he's right! We DON'T KNOW what we don't know. We're in need of data. 

No need to panic. Think of it as an awakening of knowing that we know that we don't know that will lead us someplace where we CAN know. 

We're learning as we go along. We no longer want to say, "Everyone needs something to believe in, so I believe I'll have another beer." We no longer have an obsession to use or drink. So now we can move on to another saying...

"Progress not Perfection". Meaning that we'll always be learning something new, no matter what, on our journey.