THE INVISIBLE BOAT...
If I was on the beach at Santa Monica tonight, and if I wanted to go to Catalina, which is an island, out-of-sight, and there was a small ferry there called the "S.S. Treatment Center", with people serving coffee, food ... and with attendants saying, "We'll take you ..."
And then you say, "Okay, but what's the other deal?"
Well, there are two guys skulking, down on the beach, saying, "Uh, we've got an invisible boat ... you wanna go with us?"
"Not me, Jim!"
Anybody in their right mind that had a choice and insurance would go on that "treatment centre" boat, and I don't put 'em down at all for it! The only problem with the treatment centre is this: You get out, just out-of-sight of land, and they say, "Well, we're turning back now ..."
"But, I'm not there yet! I wanna go to Catalina!"
"Well, just swim like jell, and remember the comfort you had here ..."
... and you start swimming ... and then here come these two pukes in their invisible boat ...
"You wanna ride in our invisible boat?"
"I ain't that sick, Jim!"
... and you almost drown and here they come again ...
"Wanna ride in our boat?"
You get in, and as soon as you dry off, you say, "This is ridiculous! There's no boat here! It's just an illusion! What do I do?"
"Well, better grab an oar and row ..."
... and I would just dive back into the water. But then eventually they come by one more time ...
"Wanna ride?"
... coughing and sputtering, the swimmer climbs back in
"Better grab an oar and row ..."
... still coughing and sputtering ...
"You crazy guys ..."
... and the irony is, the boat only appears after you begin to row. But no one wants to row a boat until they can see it, which makes a paradox: You have to be kind of desperate sometimes to pick up that oar when they ain't no oar ... and then the boat appears! And if you row long enough, the boat gets better and better and better ...
... and there's only one other thing to remember about this boat analogy:
You get into a good boat and it's great ... and you discover you don't really wanna go to Catalina ... you just wanna stay in the boat! And it's great! And then you turn to other pukes just like you and help get them into the boat and say, "Better grab an oar and row!"
And then after a while you say, "Sure glad I found this ..."
... but then after a while you put down your oar ... and then it takes a while, but gradually the boat disappears ... little by little, and you don't even notice.
Some people are back in the water and dead before they notice. So there's really only two potentially dangerous times in sobriety:
One is when you're first sober, and the other is all the time after that. If you could just keep "on the ball" those two times, you're home free!
And that's what A.A. is about. A.A. is not about "become wonderful". No matter how hard you try, you will never rise above "basic human being". Imperfect, emotional, some days cross ... other days so seemingly "wonderful" you could replace maple syrup on waffles ...
... but the function of A.A.’s sponsorship, Steps, meetings, fellowship, taking actions, are not to make you wonderful at all. Rather, it is to little-by-little upgrade your perception of reality ... then everything else, little by little, shapes up. And if you don't row, that's also the way it all goes back down: little by little.
A.A. is the same as it has always been, I believe, since Dr. Bob and Bill sat together in Akron, Ohio, on June 10th, 1935, and decided to work with other people and to take actions that will help them recover from the necessity to have to drink. And that's what it boils down to where the rubber meets the road. All the slickness, all the parties, all the fun, all the conventions, everything ... they are all great, but they are adjuncts (something supplementary rather than an essential part) to taking specific actions that will alter your perceptions and emotions to enable you to live in a world that seems reasonably pleasant.
That is why we gather in meetings like this, to reinforce again, to reinforce:
"No matter how it looks to you, Baby, keep on rowing."
So, watch for those two guys in an invisible boat! There's no other way that I know of that people like you and me can make it: To live in this world with some degree of dignity, to not have to drink, to feel strong, to feel, little by little, that our "psychic holes" are being filled up without ever having to drink to do that ... and it's worth everything it takes here to get that done.
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