[MajestyJo]

Live and Let Live

The crocus is a modest little flower whose special beauty is heightened by its timing and its setting. As the first floral harbinger of spring, the crocus miraculously pushes up from the frozen ground. Its cup-shaped blossoms, yellow, white, lilac, and deep purple, rejuvenate the barren winter landscape with dazzling color and fresh life.

Live and Let Live, like the crocus, achieves its true significance when considered in terms of context. At first glance, it seems simple enough: learn to op with the ups and downs of daily life and give others that same opportunity. However, for those of us who have suffered from the effects of someone else's drinking, putting those two simple suggestions into practice can be a difficult challenge.

Before coming to Al-Anon, many of us had established a pattern of postponing, trivializing, even sacrificing our own lives, our own serenity and joy in response to the disease of alcoholism. We became controllers, fixers, and martyrs, wearing our personal tragedies like an overcoat against a raging wintry blast. Not only did we deny ourselves the right to attend to our own lives, we also denied those we loved that same right.

Our lives before Al-Anon were often frozen wastelands, colorless and sterile. The warmth we found within the fellowship nurtured our spirits and helped us sense the infinite nature of our own potential. As we began to work the program, we accepted our powerlessness over others and learned to trust in a Power greater than our own. By turning our lives and our will over to the care of a Higher Power, and by taking advantage of the tools Al-Anon provides us, we learned that no situation is hopeless, that we are not alone, and that life is a rich process, full of challenge, growth, and satisfaction. Like the crocus, we pushed through the lifeless ground of our denial, our enabling, and our need to control.

Letting others live can be a more demanding responsibility. It means acknowledging that they too have a Higher Power and that it is not our will but the will of the Higher Power that prevails. The more we focus on ourselves, our own recovery, our own ability to enjoy each day of our lives, the less intensely we feel the compulsion to interfere in someone else's life. Humility, faith, and self-awareness provide us with a foundation for tolerance, and pave the way for a life full of personal satisfaction, unclouded by obsessive concern for the choices, opinions, and actions of others. As we learn to live more fully, so too can we let others live according to their own needs.