Happy to be trudging here...

Every once in a while, a piece of the puzzle clunks into place, and I am less confused than I was the moment before.  Let me begin at the beginning.  I am in recovery, in AA.  I just celebrated 23 years of sobriety.  That is a big deal, yes, but it is not really my accomplishment, not by myself, anyway.  I have had 6 sponsors, a multitude of sponsees (most of whom did not stay sober, some of whom are dead), and a huge fellowship of folks who walk the happy road of destiny with me.  Oh, and a great and wondrous Higher Power that has soothed my feathers over and over again, most recently after I bent my car on my way home, in the dark, in the rain - we (the dogs and I) got home safely, and after a few $$$, everything is fine, again.  Every so often I wonder why this recovery thing works so well.  After all, I tried to stop drinking, over and over again.  Stopping was easy, after humiliating myself.  Again.  Staying stopped was impossible till I got serious and sought help.  And today, at what was probably my 6,000th meeting, more or less, I got the answer.  The speaker talked about staying in the center of the "herd".  Now, I took sociology in my recent return to college.  I know that human DNA is less dissimilar than penguin DNA.  Penguins all look alike.  That must mean that external characteristics like body-type, skin color, etc. are negligible in the grand scheme of things.  What is most important is what is going on beneath our appearances.  And humans are not geared to form herds, not outside their ethnicity, that is.  Thinking about it, that is why we cannot seem to all come together as one race, and continue to sit on our little islands and shoot at each other.  We do not trust those who LOOK different.  Except in AA.  No boundaries there between the folks.  Nothing, not race, age, creed, political or sexual persuasion, social position, income (or lack thereof), NOTHING separates us.  We are the herd that can provide the buffer from the cruel, cruel world we all knew and drank about.  Someone in the herd has been there, done that, no matter what is happening for me.  And gotten through it sober.  It is precious beyond words.  It all boils down to the singleness of purpose we all adhere to, to help the alcoholic who stills suffers.  That includes myself.  Wow.  Lucky, lucky, lucky.