It takes courage and humility to open new doors and close old ones.
Living Purely, Chapter 4, “Courage”
If we imagine life as a hallway full of open doors, each leading to new paths with new opportunities, then active addiction essentially means walking down the hallway, kicking the doors shut. Staying clean in NA and working the program allows us to explore new opportunities or re-examine old possibilities that we had blocked from ourselves in our addiction. Courage and humility make it possible.
The freedom to choose our own path can be scary. After all, if we make a choice for ourselves, we can't blame others if we're unhappy with the results! Every time we choose a new door to walk through—or a door to close behind us—we gain courage to keep doing it. Actively making choices helps us see that our Higher Power will be present along the way, even when the initial results are not what we wanted. Maybe we walk away from a relationship, our team, or a job that didn't satisfy us, and then find ourselves feeling lonely or lost. We find a new partner, a new team, a new job—or maybe we're back to where we left off—and our feelings change again. Everything is temporary, and more opportunities and options are always coming our way.
Some of us change relationships, jobs, and teams like others change socks and underwear, but if we're not comfortable with ourselves, none of these external factors can keep us comfortable for long. Courage helps us walk through doors. Humility will help us embrace - or endure - what we find on the other side. Humility means knowing ourselves, flaws and all. To be happy with our choices, we need to be honest with ourselves about who we are, what we need and what we want. The NA program helps us find the courage to make our own choices and the humility we need to live with the choices we make.
The Steps help me find the courage and humility I need to choose my own path. I will harness my freedom by living according to the Steps.
