We must never be blinded by the futile philosophy that we are just the hapless victims of our inheritance, of our life experience, and of our surroundings--that these are the sole forces that make our decisions for us. this is not the road to freedom. We have to believe that we can really choose. ~~~~~~~~~ "As active alcoholics, we lost our ability to choose whether we would drink. we were the victims of a compulsion which seemed to decree that we must go on with our own destruction.
"Yet we finally did make a choices that brought about our recovery. We came to believe that alone we were powerless over alcohol. This was surely a choice, and a most difficult one. We came to believe that a Higher Power could restore us to sanity when we became willing to practice A.A.'s Twelve Steps.
"In short, we chose to 'become willing,' and no better choice did we ever make."
"As Bill Sees It" 1 Grapevine, November 1960 2 Letter, 1966
As we go through life, we decide to be rigid in our thinking about most everything, for the sake of simplicity and mental laziness so that we don't have to rethink anything that we've already experienced. This is what the big book refers to as "Old Ideas", when it say that "we must let go of our old ideas absolutely." These opinions, decisions, judgments if you will, prevent us from choosing to feel happiness, joy, excitement, contentment, and even love on a daily basis as we've already decided that- This and that (and ultimately our life) sucks because of some way old idea based on an experience that wasn't exactly awesome in our perfectionistic outlook.
Once we realize that our best thinking got us here, we can agree that most of our "thinking" is flawed and throw out all of our knee jerk reactions to everything, and experience life anew sober. It's all new and we have to spend the first couple years, like a child, learning how to do everything over again for the first time sober. It feels awkward, at first for sure, like going to your first AA dance, but it is really fun once you "get over yourself" and DECIDE to have a good time. It's then that the light bulb comes on and we realize that we can decide to have fun, joy, peace, contentment, serenity, and love each day and every day. This is the stuff the serenity prayer talks about in "the courage to change the things I can"
