The Gift of Bonding

 This is the first time I have considered the concepts of ‘bondage’ vs. ‘bonding’. Off the bat, it strikes me as similar to learning the difference between ‘humiliation’ and ‘humility’. 

Early on in my sobriety, I had the old belief that having humility was either false, or a precursor to being humiliated. Saints could maybe have had true humility, but I was no saint. Any humility I displayed was a false front, an assumed virtue. It was false: it was the mask that my ego wore to ward off humiliation. Being a front, it didn’t work, but I had nothing else to work with.

So, in thinking about the concepts of ‘bonding’ and ‘bondage’, I see again the difference between something I want and something I shun. Certainly people in bondage can create a bonding with others in the same pickle jar. I like the bonding which encourages personal growth - that which I find in and out of the rooms of A.A. when I choose to associate with like-minded people. People who don’t view the personal growth of another to be a challenge to their own limiting beliefs. People who encourage and recognize growth in another as something to celebrate rather than to find it a personal affront or a challenge to the status quo.

Working with others, listening to them tell their stories, hearing the similarities instead of being stopped by the differences - these things work to develop a bond with people who have learned how to live in harmony with the Power of Love.