The Hazards of Publicity

 I joined a traveling religious acting troupe after I graduated from high school. I figured it would be a fun and worthy way to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. What it taught me was to expect applause for every little effort; that speaking someone else’s words would be sufficient; that I never represented simply myself and had no idea who that was, anyway. It began as something which would fulfill a childhood commitment to God, while satisfying the ego’s desire for attention. Weird mixture for a young, impressionable, immature girl.

Decades later, after finding myself in need of the humility necessary for growth (my egotism showed up as being more pitiful than everyone else), alcoholism led me to the rooms of recovery. Nearing ten years of sobriety, I started this blog. I very quickly attached each page to my Facebook page, and had a couple of regular readers. I appreciated their kind words, and felt that I was being of service by posting my words.

One morning, I awoke with the realization that what I was doing was looking again for that applause. One of my shadow issues is feeling like I need approval, and here I was - engaging publicly in self-seeking. I was flouting the tradition of anonymity, and I knew I had to take ego out of the equation and stop posting. At first, my written thoughts had been very general, but they quickly became specific to recovery from alcoholism by following the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous. No matter how I tried to justify it, I couldn't escape the glaringly obvious fact that I was setting myself up as a public voice, so the social media shares ended.

Our charge - one which has worked for everyone’s behalf since early last century - is to quietly concentrate on ourselves and our relationship with our Higher Power, and to help others directly, letting our actions, not our words, speak for us.

So. I do this for my own deepening of understanding. I share it with people who might find it useful, and I try every day to kick ego to the curb. It’s all “attraction rather than promotion”.



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