I used to be fully convinced I could do it. I had honestly believed my path to a life of peace and serenity was going to be achieved through nothing more than self-reliance. But when that path led me into a dead-end with a suicide attempt, it was then I realized just how wrong I was. Thankfully, what I rely the most upon today is my Higher Power, except to get there took a whole heck of a lot of pain and hardship.
I really think most human beings are stubborn by nature. Aren’t the majority of us initially full of so much pride and ego that we often convince ourselves we can get through anything on our own, no matter how difficult it seems to be. Well I know I once did and that path began with me deciding in 1995 that I didn’t need any type of 12 Step program to recover from my alcoholism and drug addiction. Instead, I chose to forge my own path of sobriety, one that felt more than not like I was always fighting a lot of fires. For a good while I was quite successful in doing it too and each time I did, I merely patted myself on the back and continued to foster the belief that I all I needed to make it through life was myself. But in 2007, when my long-term relationship completely collapsed and ended for good, I saw the first chink appear in my prideful armor I had constructed out of self-reliance.
Life then became like a domino effect for me after that. After the fall of that relationship came the demise of my business. And after the demise of my business came the collapse of my financial stability. And after the collapse of my financial stability came the downfall of my health. And after the downfall of my health came a five-day stint in the mental ward of a psychiatric hospital. And finally after that five-day stint in the mental ward of a psychiatric hospital, came that eventual attempt at suicide in the fall of 2011. It was then that I knew a life of self-reliance was never going to work. I was so thoroughly miserable, angry, and resentful at that point in time that I knew the only thing I could do was fully seek something greater than myself because I had already tried everything else.
Since the spring of 2012, I have been doing my best to rely upon the Higher Power I found in working the 12 Steps. It hasn’t been easy for me though to maintain this practice on any level solely because I lived with self-reliance for so long. But I have to say there’s far less fires having to be put out in my life these days. And even when there has been one because I went back to a little bit of self-reliance, it’s rarely required anything more than a watering can to be put out. That’s a far cry from the days when a life of self-reliance led to multiple five-alarm fires.
The bottom line is that any life run on self-reliance is only ever going to lead someone to fighting one fire after another. While they may be successful for a time in putting each of them out all on their own, eventually some will get so out of control it will get them seriously burned in the process. And when a person sustains enough of those serious burns, it’s then and only then will they realize that self-reliance failed them. And it’s then they hopefully will seek something greater than themselves to run their life instead…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
