Daily Reflections · November 1
I Cannot Change the Wind
Two sentences on easing off, first written to “you,” and how they and nearly all of their chapter came to say “we.”
Today’s reading
The reading for November 1 in Daily Reflections, AA’s book of short readings by members. Its passage comes from Alcoholics Anonymous, the Big Book, page 85, in the chapter “Into Action.”
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Themes and asks
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Easing off
The passage’s warning is aimed at the good stretches rather than the bad ones: the danger it sees is in doing less once things are going well.
- What did you do every day early on that you’ve quietly stopped doing?
- How would someone close to you know you were coasting before you did?
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You, then we
In the draft the passage told “you” what would happen; in print it’s what members say to one another, and to themselves. Behind the words tells how it changed. Read that way, the warning isn’t someone else’s to give.
- When you notice you’ve let something slide, whose voice says so: yours, or someone else’s?
- What would you tell yourself today, if the warning were yours to give?
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Into thanks
Today’s reflection is one member’s account of prayer that turned from a last resort into thanks.
- When do you pray, or do whatever you’d call it: only when you’re stuck, or other times too?
- If today’s prayer were only thanks, what would be in it?
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Out of reach
Today’s title is the reflection’s own, from a line where the member sorts what can’t be changed from what can. Read beside the passage, the daily work is on the side that can.
- What are you still pushing against that won’t move?
- What’s within reach today that you’ve been leaving for later?
Behind the words
You became we
The passage comes near the end of the Big Book’s pages on Step Ten, in the chapter “Into Action.” The paragraph before it says members have stopped fighting anything, even alcohol, and react to it sanely “so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.” The passage turns that condition into a warning. The sentence after next is another day’s reading, November 16’s, and the line A Daily Reprieve is named for. Two paragraphs later the chapter takes up Step Eleven, prayer and meditation, where today’s reflection goes.
In the draft, the passage spoke to the reader. In the copies of the book sent out for comment early in 1939, known as the loan copy, its two sentences said “you” or “your” three times; in the book printed that April, each became “we” or “our.” So did nearly all of “Into Action.” Counted in a transcription of the loan copy, the chapter used “you” and its forms 410 times, and “we” and its forms 52. The printed chapter, about the same length, used them 5 times and 458.
Bill W. told why in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age (1957). Among the replies to the loan copies was one from Dr. Howard, a psychiatrist in Montclair, New Jersey, who found the text too full of “you” and “must.” He wanted the coercion taken out, Bill wrote, and the fellowship put on “a ‘we ought’ basis instead of a ‘you must’ basis.” It meant reworking the whole text. Bill argued weakly, then gave in, and Dr. William D. Silkworth and Dr. Harry Tiebout gave similar advice.
What the passage warns of had already happened close to home. Around the end of April 1937, Ebby T., the old friend who had carried the message to Bill in 1934, drank again, after two years and about seven months sober by his own count. It was the first of many slips. The passage names no one.
More on Dr. Howard and the same change in the chapter read aloud at meetings: How It Works, in Keep Coming Back. On the copies sent out for comment and what came back: Loan copy, in By the Carload. On Ebby’s slip and the years after it: The merry-go-round, in My Sponsor, Ebby.
One chapter, counted
Every “you” and every “we” in “Into Action,” the chapter today’s passage comes from, in the copies sent out for comment and in the book as printed. Counted in a transcription of the loan copy and in the first edition, each a little under 5,000 words.
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Early 1939The loan copy
you410
we52
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April 1939The Big Book
you5
we458
“you” counts you, your, yours and yourself; “we” counts we, us, our, ourselves and the printed chapter’s one “ourself.”
Today’s passage is three of the changes. Of the five left in print, four are in the Seventh Step prayer, speaking to God. Dr. Howard’s other word went the other way: as some orders to “you” became things “we must” do, “must” rose from 10 to 15.
Threads
Each one opens the calendar with its days lit up.
Sources
- Alcoholics Anonymous. Works Publishing, 1939; fourth edition, AA World Services, 2001. “Into Action,” counted in the first edition.
- The pre-publication manuscript of early 1939 (a loan copy), from a transcription. “Into Action.”
- Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age. Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, 1957. “Service: The Third Legacy” (the loan copies and the replies).
- Mel B., Ebby: The Man Who Sponsored Bill W. Hazelden, 1998. Chapter 8, quoting Ebby’s 1954 recollections.
- Daily Reflections. AA World Services, 1990. November 1 · aa.org
Something wrong here? A date, a name, a quotation? Let me know
Daily Reflections is AA’s book of readings for every day of the year, each written by a member about a favorite passage from AA’s literature. A Daily Reprieve gives each day questions to sit with and the story behind its words.