Paradoxes

by Doug W.

I love paradoxes— at one level it is a puzzle at another level wisdom, it may be a truth where I cannot see it, or at the first look it may appear to be false. In AA, the Big Book has many paradoxes. In the story that was in the Big Book from Second Edition.

The story of The Professor And The Paradox, we can see four paradoxes explained:

We SURRENDER TO WIN. On the face of it, surrendering certainly does not seem like winning. But it is in A.A. Only after we have come to the end of our rope, hit a stone wall in some aspect of our lives beyond which we can go no further; only when we hit “bottom” in despair and surrender, can we accomplish sobriety which we could never accomplish before. We must, and we do, surrender in order to win.

We GIVE AWAY TO KEEP IT. That seems absurd and untrue. How can you keep anything if you give it away? But in order to keep whatever it is we get in A.A., we must go about giving it away to others, for no fees or rewards of any kind. When we cannot afford to give away what we have received so freely in A.A., we had better get ready for our next “drunk.” It will happen every time. We’ve got to continue to give it away in order to keep it.

We SUFFER TO GET WELL. There is no way to escape the terrible suffering of remorse and regret and shame and embarrassment which starts us on the road to getting well from our affliction. There is no new way to shake out a hangover. It’s painful. And for us, necessarily so. I told this to a friend of mine as he sat weaving to and fro on the side of the bed, in terrible shape, about to die for some paraldehyde. I said, “Lost John”—that’s his nickname—”Lost John, you know you’re going to have to do a certain amount of shaking sooner or later.” “Well,” he said, “for God’s sake let’s make it later!” We suffer to get well.

We DIE TO LIVE. That is a beautiful paradox straight out of the Biblical idea of being “born again” or “in losing one’s life to find it.” When we work at our Twelve Steps, the old life of guzzling and fuzzy thinking, and all that goes with it, it gradually dies, and we acquire a different and a better way of life. As our shortcomings are removed, a little part of our life dies, and another part of our life lives. We in A.A. die to live.

To understand a paradox, we need to be open-minded and willing to see things from different perspectives. Let’s think about this: When does a circle and a triangle work together? Well, one answer is when it is a symbol of AA’s Recovery, Unity, and Service.

Now, let’s take those two dimensional shapes of the circle and the triangle and expand them into three dimensional shape, a cone appears. You know, like an ice cream cone. If you imagine that cone in your head or hold one in your hand, you’ll notice something interesting. Depending on how you look at it, it can seem like either a triangle from looking from the side or a looking from the top down on it, it is a circle. Isn’t that cool? Even something as simple as a cone can help us understand how two different things can actually be true.

So, embracing a fresh set of eyes can indeed lead us to moments of clarity, where what once appeared contradictory now harmonizes beautifully. It’s a reminder of the wonder and potential that lie in our capacity to see things from different angles.

And hey, let’s not forget about the ice cream for that cone! When you load up that cone with a few scoops, it’s like you’re getting a taste of heaven.