“…is none of your business.”
This was one of the earliest things I was told by my first sponsor in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). It stemmed from me having become overly concerned with what former sponsees, friends, and various other people were saying about me when I wasn’t around. I was reminded of this invaluable lesson once again by several individuals due to insecurities that had arisen within me recently.
I know I still have a few of them to work through and most often they’ve arisen when I’ve placed my heart and soul into a connection that ended up dissipating. Over the past few months, I’ve gone through this very thing with a long-standing friend, as well as with a handful of sponsees I had helped for a good number of months in AA. In each case, I allowed my insecurities to get the best of me, which in turn led me at random times to ask others if those people had been saying anything about me. In some cases, they hadn’t, but in others they had, and it wasn’t necessarily the greatest of things being said either. In all honesty, the only good thing that came out of me doing this behavior was in guiding me right back to that lesson of “what another thinks about you is none of your business.”
The fact is everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion of another. I know there are plenty of people out there who probably wouldn’t have the nicest of things to say about me. But I also know there are plenty out there who probably would. Except me trying to find out what someone is saying about me when I’m not around only ever leads me to being more insecure and less peaceful and serene in life. That’s a pretty lousy tradeoff just to find out what someone thinks about me now isn’t it?
So as I sit here and reflect on those words my original sponsor once told me, I believe the core issue is really in my need to simply reaffirm my belief that I’m doing the best I can in all of my connections with others. In the case of this former long-standing friend, I did everything I could to be the best of one to him and then some. And in regards to each of those former sponsees, I went above and beyond, time and time again, to help them in the 12 Steps and strengthen their recovery.
The reality is that maybe it was just time for each of those connections to end as they did and when they did. I mustn’t beat myself up over these losses because I know I truly did do the best I could with each of them. And whether they have negative things to say about me or not shouldn’t really matter, because what matters is that I am a good person with a good heart who’s doing my best in everything I put myself in nowadays. If they can’t see that, that’s on them and so is their opinions of me, which I really don’t want or need to know…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson