Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- Steps Ten and Eleven 20th Spring Conference
- Speaker
- Tom I
- Date
- 2010-05-06
Transcript
Source: Tom I – Steps Ten and Eleven 20th Spring Conference – 2010-05-06.mp3 File: tom-i-steps-ten-and-eleven-20th-spring-conference-2010-05-06.mp3 Duration: 00:38:21
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Good morning. Tom Ivester, an alcoholic. And for Eddie's sake, Tomás alcohólico. I haven't been around him for too long. I started to introduce myself that way. It's great to see you. A wonderful Sunday morning crowd. This is normally packing day, and you guys are hanging to the bitter end. It's great. I was thinking about unity. I was out walking there a little bit, unescorted, by the way. But I was out walking.
I don't know if any of you have seen that little playground for dogs over there. Man, they got everything from Malamutes. I mean, they got some huge dudes over there, and Chihuahuas. I think I saw one rabbit in there. And those dudes, if you put them in a different venue, they'd probably kill each other. But somehow or other, when they get together, there's unity there, and they're having so much fun. I want to go over and help chase the ball.
That looked like a lot of fun. Maybe we ought to take a look at them to look at some of our unity issues, that it really works. Well, I'm delighted to be here. Good to be here with my buddies. We're not only care about each other, we're good friends. We're old friends. And tell you, one of the things we have to watch when we get together, if we don't watch it, we'll have our own convention because we're glad to see each other. We've got a lot to talk about.
And so if we don't watch it, we will. We'll be off somewhere huddled up like there's no conference going on. But we've been mixing it in here pretty darn good. So I am glad to be here. Good to see you. And I won't have time to visit much because I got work to do this morning. Has anybody got a full-grown Big Book? I mean a real full-grown one, real that big. Now that's the full-grown Big Book. God, thanks, Dick.
That is the sick row right there. No, no, no, that's too deep for me. Well, anyway, that's great to travel because it fits in a suitcase a lot better than this. My job, I've got two steps, and I'm probably going to lump them together. And mine are ten and eleven, and then Michael's going to come along and hit cleanup and do twelve. And so I'm going to go through that. I'm not going to teach you a thing. If you leave here any smarter than you came in, you're doing some reading on your own, because I won't be teaching you anything.
What I want to do is just share some experience and my particular way of working with these steps, and we'll give you any advice if I can help it. If I do, ignore it, because I don't mean to give it. Some people, I haven't heard it here this weekend, but some people refer to these last three steps as maintenance steps. That's a term that's vanishing, thank God, because they're anything but maintenance steps.
You know, I find them to be clearly action steps. An interesting thing to me that—well, I don't need my glasses now. Interesting thing to me, now this is just my read, but from promises on, everything else in the steps, ten, eleven, and twelve… Starts with me, and none of it ends with me. None of it. It all goes into working with others. The preps in that, right before eight and nine, where it says, of course we're working on ourselves, in so many words, but our real purpose—you've heard it said here this weekend—our real purpose is to be of maximum service to God and those about us.
And so when you look at maintenance steps and look at the personal inventory part of ten, eleven, twelve, certainly that's important, but it's not the headline. Not the headline. You know, I've come to fully believe that you don't solve a self-centered problem by studying self. It just doesn't compute somehow, you know that. And so the whole thrust of ten, eleven, twelve to me is how to put this marvelous program that's described in those promises, how do we put that into real life? And I'm just going to pick a few things in there and share some experience around it.
Looks like a billboard. These promises, and then it says, this thought brings us to step ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to act, or to set right, new
[00:05:04]
mistakes as we go along. And I think all that's really saying to me is that what we're restored to is human being. We're not extraordinary. We're restored to just normal human beings. Like any other human being, we're going to goof. I mean, that's just human nature. That's the frailty of the species. But we goof, you know, and—but it doesn't require calling Hermann Freud to deal with it. Most of the time, it's just simple blunders, simple goofs that require just attention and then move, you know, not to go over and linger it and go into soul searching and deep thinking.
Just, it's life. That's just part of what life is. And so certainly we're going to do that, and inventory deals with that thing. And then the guideline in that, really important to me. is that when we deal with a goof, just like a human being will do, that what we do is deal with it immediately, not let it fester and grow until it does become a big deal. We deal with it immediately and take care of business by normally about the only thing you need to say, I'm sorry about that. I'll try not to do that again.
And then what? Immediately turn our attention to someone we can help and not dwelling on that, you know. So I think that's the spirit of this kind of inventory. It's to deal quickly with the things. It's like pulling weeds out of the garden. If you don't pull them out, pretty soon you grow in weeds and the garden's gone. And so I think it's the same thing with this. If I let these things that get out of whack a little bit and I ignore them, they'll grow. And the first thing you know, they'll take over and become big deals instead of little deals. So to me, that's the spirit of this thing.
It's not a stare at your navel and think great thoughts to Step. This, to me, is an action step of getting into the business and do it. And it is another place in there that—y'all like his jacket? Yeah. Good. Yeah, I like you, girl. Wait a minute, not that much. No, no. Well, she said take it off and then charged at me. I know what that used to mean. Later. No, I think the whole spirit of this step is wrapped up in a—not in that, but in the— No other speaker got hot up here.
Then, you know, that's survival stuff. And then it gets into what I think is a real, real thrust of Step Ten, in this whole business of how we engage. You know, we've gone through the inventory, we've gone through amends, we've experienced freedom, thank God. And now what do we do with this recovery? And the real good sentence in here that I take very seriously: We have entered the world of the spirit. That's what it is.
You know, we're not lost anymore. We've got a spirit, and we can live in that spirit. It's here this morning, in the world of spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. Now, I don't think that means, for me, that doesn't mean personal insight and awareness. We've already dealt enough with that. It's in growing in understanding and effectiveness, and I take that as a responsibility of mine.
And it's like my study of the animals out there. I'll take that home, and I guarantee I'll use that in our next group inventory about dogs do it better than we do. And so, I understand that. I understand dog behavior. And so, I want to understand. Let me just give you a couple of examples. I wish we had a half day to talk about it, but I'll talk about them quick. And a lot of Yankees in here, so I know you listen quick.
And so, you're either that or you're lost if you don't. I'll give you a couple of examples of what that means to me. I, for a lot of years, I increasingly worried about the failure rate in Alcoholics Anonymous. That it seemed to me like we had as many people, if not more, going out as we did coming in. And that as much stuff as we had going, as much as we're bouncing alcoholics around all over the planet, you know, we're seeing little to no growth and even decline in individuals and groups and in fellowships.
[00:10:02]
So, yeah, that's troubling to me. It's troubling to me at a local level when I see people come into our group with a life beaten all out of shape and see hope and walk off. Now, I could easily demonize the person who walked in the door and say, well, you know, he wasn't ready or he wasn't sincere. I could write it off any way I want to. But the fact of the business is the person came to the emergency room and for some reason walked off. Well, I don't want to just observe that.
I want to try to understand that. What is it that somebody comes to reach out for this help and then walks away? And so I want to understand that so that maybe I can do something about it. So we want to grow in understanding and effectiveness. If it isn't working, why isn't it working? And so what I did, just stumbled into it like most things I do. I've taken people through the steps since I got here.
I took people through the steps before it was invented. And it was ugly, but it worked. I got them through. I did it Marine Corps style. Hope Sandy will forgive me. But either do it or die. Don't come in here without a written inventory in your pocket, that kind of thing, you know. So done it that way. I've never done it any way that didn't work to some extent, but none to a great extent. And so that's a big concern of mine.
So I started looking at that. As, is that something that we could do? And I, one day I was sitting with a buddy of mine, and he told me how he was doing it, how he was doing taking people through the steps. And I really liked what he said. You know, he mentioned one thing that just really rang a bell with me, and I've used it ever since. Rather than going through, it's not studying the book. I mean, I think we almost study it to death, for God's sakes.
It's work, the working, doing the work that's laid out in the book. And so he told me how he did it. He said, the operative term with us is, do you identify or relate with what we just read? Identify means you've done it. Relate means you would have if you'd have thought of it. And it's the operative term. Never, what do you think? Never, never. Our thinking is what got us here, you know, so it doesn't make the deal. It's not a text study.
It's an action deal. And the whole purpose of it is to make that story of recovery, which is what the book is, my story of recovery. Well, that made sense to me when he explained it. We sat down a few chairs in a hall in a hotel, and we did it. We just grabbed people, said, sit down, let's talk. And we did it. It made sense to me. So I started doing that. That's the way I do it today. And in all honesty, I've never done any more satisfying or effective work in my life. You know, the first group that I took through, I didn't handpick anybody.
I just told folks that I sponsored, if you want to do it, we'll do it, and bring anybody you want to. And so they proceeded to do so. So we had a whole gaggle of people. Launched into it. And there's an open door policy. When you say y'all come, you better be ready, because there's no screening procedure when you say y'all come. And there was a—most of them were all right. They were ugly enough to fit in. And so, but there was one woman who came in who was an extremely sophisticated lady, and about as angry a woman as I've ever seen. Stone atheist and proud of it.
Loved to argue with me. I mean, she just flat admired that. And she walked in the door, and I thought, man, we should have shut that door. I'm going to be spending the next year in combat with this gal. And the strange thing, that she came—and I was dreading that. And she was true to form for a little while. She sat down with a couple of other aggravated cases, just about like her. Funny how we hurt, isn't it?
You better check where you've been sitting this week. We kind of seek out where we fit. And she sat down with these two folks, and it was a strange thing, I started to watch them mellow down. And so I'm somebody—those of you who know me know this—that I believe in spontaneity. I'm a spontaneous person. I'm totally unpredictable. And I believe in spontaneity, provided it's well planned. And I do. So we just happened to spontaneously end on the third step prayer one night in the meeting, and I had been— And I had been preparing for the spontaneity, and so we
[00:15:03]
ended on a prayer, and I said, Okay, gang, we're going to do something different tonight. Three options. We're going to do the third step prayer. Three options. One, you can join hands and get down and do it with us, or you can hold our hands while we do it, or you can step back and watch us do it. She told me later, I won't repeat it, but she told me later all of the adjectives she found to define who I was.
I mean, it was none of it kind, I'll tell you that. But she got in. And, you know, burning bush, she didn't get up and say hallelujah, but it was a breakthrough, a breakthrough. She was never the same woman. That was just that defining moment where she stepped forward instead of back. And if anybody had told me this would happen, I would have never believed it. I mean, I could not have believed it.
She became my backup if I had to be out of town. And I wouldn't have turned one of those dogs over to her, but she did a great job. And today, she is without a doubt the most sensitive. If I've got a female coming into town or a female that I'm trying to help in some way, that's my go-to person. Amazing stuff happened. So I didn't need much more evidence to convince me that was a great thing. So I still do that. But it's just one example of trying to understand a problem and then do something effective.
You know, what can I do that will make that better? And so I think it's a huge challenge. You got—I could go a half day on that, but I'm going to have to hurry because Michael's mean. But she'll knock me off the podium, and I know it. I'll just give you just a couple more. What I want to do is just stimulate some thinking about it, you know, because you probably share the same concerns I do with things that you'd like to see done better.
And, yeah, I was concerned for many, many years, and a lot of you know it, I was concerned for many, many years about this court signing stuff, you know, about signing papers. And I know it's well-intended. Nobody's trying to mistreat or clone members or anything like that. It's just folks reaching out, trying to do something, don't know what to do. And, you know, I'll just frame it this way. I think an awful lot of what we used to do outside agencies now do because we quit doing what we used to do.
And so the ball is in our court, is the way I see it. And so the same thing with that paper business. If you want to compare that to some—compare what happened to Ebby, who never really became a successful member, but he was an effective guy in terms of an alternative to having somebody mandated by a court, where three people went down there and said, Judge, don't put him in jail, for God's sakes, he's done that.
Let us have him. And the judge said, Take him, man. You deserve him. Take him away. And if it hadn't been for that, you know, AA might have happened, but it would have happened a different way because he was the guy who triggered the action that went on. And so, but contrast that to three people going to a court and saying, Let us have him, to what's happening today. And it's not only in the case of people who wind up in a court, but it's in any profession.
Look at how folks are dealt with in the medical profession, and it's not remarkably different from that whatsoever. You know, any profession, ministry, you know, everybody's got a capturing program for drunks. And then often they wind up in some sort of a mandated process. And so that's troubling to me. You know, that was troubling to me about that paper. I went for years and wouldn't sign one. And it wasn't because I didn't want to care for the alcoholics, because I did care for the alcoholic.
And I never would sign. I never embarrassed anybody, but I would very adroitly push past the buck to somebody else. And I'd say, Well, Dave does that. He's got a brand new pen. He will be glad to do that. And if he didn't, he could get somebody. But that's the way I deal with it. But that's a lousy way to deal with it. And so one day, I just kind of, well, sort of out of the blue, said to our corrections committee was meeting and right started to close the meeting, I said, How would you guys like to try to do something about the court paper business?
And one of the guys, sponsor, old-timer, said, Oh, Tom, we can't do a thing about that. They do it all over the country. I said, Well, let's don't fix the whole country. Let's just work here in Mayberry. And he said, Well, we could try it. Well, we did try it, and in 14 years, there has not been a piece of paper in our group. In 14 years, because we set up a method for working with
[00:20:00]
that. We thought there's a more effective way to do it. We didn't want to cut people off. We wanted to appropriately integrate them into Alcoholics Anonymous, not have them come in here like they're wearing a brand on their head, but they come in like any other alcoholic. And people ask me today, You still get people from probation or parole? I am pleased to say I don't know, and don't care. We don't check resumes here.
Yeah, you come on in. If you've got the wounds, you're welcome. And so we don't care where you come from. So anyway, just a couple examples, and there are dozens. We're doing something with lawyers right now. We're trying to do something with docs too, and that's the hardest bunch of all. Well, docs aren't so much, but the protection system that shields docs from being invaded by people like me is very good.
So, but anyway, it's a challenge, but that's what I think that's what it means. This thing is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. If it ain't working, why not? And can I do something to help make it work better? And so to me, that's the battle cry for what this is about in Step Ten. And we've got a section in there about not drinking. That's pretty important in this book. But it's basically saying that, you know, that when we get into this world of spirit, we start doing this thing, practicing this way of life, this obsession to drink will disappear.
It'll just flat go away. And that's true. It says it's been removed. But the thing I always like to remember, that it hadn't been moved too far. Mine's sitting over under that table, and all I got to do to get it back is stop practicing what I do to make it go away. So if I stop practicing these principles, all bets are off. And I'm an alcoholic. You know, I'm not somebody who used to be. Now, I haven't had an obsession to drink for many, many years, but I sure have.
I have had points in my life where I swore to God my whole life looked like a dark tunnel, and I could not imagine another day, and wanted to drink so bad I could almost eat my shoes. And that's desperation, eh? That's desperation. Most of the time when we get to that thing, we yield and find relief. But this program taught me how to do that differently. And I'll tell you, I learned very simply that, you know, one, not count on this thing that just because it's removed, that it's gone, that that sucker is waiting for it.
All you got to do is let up on practice of this thing. A little later on it says, This is how we are, provided we maintain our spiritual condition. But if we let up on that, look out. Look who's knocking on the door. And so, I always like to get a reality check with people on that, is that you just fasten your seatbelt because it may come. And I want to be here in both fair and foul weather. So wonderful stuff happens in there.
And what's important to me is this thing of being in fit condition to deal with this. As we get into 11, you find sort of the launching pad for this kind of an ability to deal with stuff and an awareness of the world around us, where we look at, in both in this step and in 11, with meditation and in prayer. And this one here, we're talking about this early on, hit 'em, kind of deal, survive, hang in. In 11, we broaden it out a little bit.
We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God. Praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Now that's a great prayer. It doesn't say, do a trick for me so I'll know you're up there. It doesn't say that. It says, you know, show me what to do. Show me what to do. You know, give me my mission in life. And that's a great launching pad.
If you pray that prayer, you got to be serious about it, because if you don't, watch it'll land on you big time. Now I'll tell you what I do. Two things about that. This one first. I start out every day, and I did it this morning, partially looking at dogs and doing some other stuff. I can do two things at once. But what I do every morning is I have a little bit of time. Not long. It doesn't take long. It doesn't take too long.
But I want to engage with my power.
[00:25:01]
And what I'm doing, I want to do three things. One, when I engage, there's three things that I want to get across. To me, not to the higher power. He already knows. But I want to make sure that I'm tuned into it. One, I want to get clearly in touch with who I am. Now I know my name, rank, serial number, but I'm talking about who I am as a human being. I'm a guy who, by any measure, ought to be dead.
Now there's no question about that. I ought to be dead. I did everything I could do almost to wear it out, and if justice was done, I would be. So I know who I am. I'm a guy who even just by gross evaluation of me would fit that criteria. But I have an illness. That kills the overwhelming majority of people who have it. Over 90% of people with alcoholism die of it, never even knowing there's a way out.
And I mean, you talk about deep. I'm working with a fellow in Kenya right now. We email. It costs too much to write a letter, so I'm email. And interesting country, 30 million people, 2 million of them in Nairobi, 28 million God knows where, scattered throughout Kenya. And what we're dealing with is how do you get it available to folks? Interesting challenge, eh? Interesting challenge. So, and see, the overwhelming majority of alcoholics in that country and many, many others will die of this problem never even knowing it, folks like us.
And so I want to put myself in that, knowing who am I? I'm a guy ought to be dead, and I've been given recovery. I didn't even look for it, didn't ask for it. It was flat given to me. It was delivered to me, introduced by a non-alcoholic and delivered by alcoholics. And so I want to be aware of that. And it's to make me understand the majesty of the miracle of my recovery. I'm a guy who's been given life through no effort of my own particularly, and undeserving to be sure, but that didn't seem to count.
And so I've been given. So I want to be aware of that. And because of that, I am deeply grateful that I've been given a life beyond imagination. If I was writing a script for a movie, I could not have written a better script than what life has been given to me in Alcoholics Anonymous. Could not do better. And, and it's given to me. So that being true, I want to, the second thing I ask for in that daily walk, or sitting by my lake pond, is I want to be grateful for that, which I am.
I want to recognize how deeply grateful I am, and I want to show that in how I live. I want to reflect well on the gift I've been given. My God, is that too much to ask? Yeah, I don't want to be some grumpy dude who walks down the street and my mouth sounds like an open sewer when I have a conversation. No, that's not the way I want to do that. I want to be somebody who even looks remotely worthy of the gift.
So I want to wear that gratitude so that I can be part of the program of attraction and not repulsion. And so, is that a lot to ask, eh? But that's what I ask for in the morning. You know, let me wear that attitude. And it's been given to me. It's spades, no question about it. I treat every human being I meet as a lady or gentleman, even if they don't even act like it. I treat them anyway. You know, give them a reputation to live up to.
If they're just a dedicated jerk, I know how to leave a jerk, for God's sakes. I was one long enough. But I'm not going to hang out there, you know, but I'm going to give it a good shot. And so that's what I want to do. I want to wear that gratitude. And then the third thing that I ask for, Bob can recite this for me because he's heard me do it a thousand times, but it's the marching order of my life.
And the third thing I ask for is to make me sensitive to opportunities to be of service. Not send me a drunk. Make me sensitive to opportunities to be of service. And I guarantee you better believe it if you make that prayer, because the opportunities are endless. They are absolutely endless. Everybody wasn't having fun here this weekend. There were people here this weekend walking around contemplating whether to end it all or fight some more, sitting with us this weekend.
Everybody wasn't. Sitting with us this weekend, everybody wasn't in a hoopy mood. Some people here, excuse me, desperately hoping to
[00:30:04]
catch something, you know. So I'd like to recognize that. So I want to be sensitive to opportunity of service. And man, I'm telling you, they are truly everywhere, everywhere. And if you don't pray that unless you mean it, because you'll get swamped. And particularly if you pay attention to what you see. And so I do. Now, I do. I know I'm probably a nuisance to people sometimes, but that's their problem.
I live about half my life on planes. I was on a plane going somewhere, and there was a little short woman. She was trying to get the bag up in that, you know where you put the bag up there. She couldn't have put it up there with a ladder. I mean, that's— So I went over to her. I said, Give me the bag. She said, No, and pulled the bag back. I said, Give me the bag, and I always took it away from her.
And so I got it over and got it up there. She said, You're from the South, aren't you? I said, Well, yeah. I said, How'd you know that? She said, Well, we don't do that in New York. I said, Well, yes, you do. The only difference is when you do it in New York, they leave with the bag, you know. But see, that's no big deal, is it? It was to that woman. It was to me. So that's kind of— excuse me— I don't be like a dog. I want to get along with the folk around me. And that's a no-brainer, simple little thing.
But my God, it meant a lot to that gal. It's an opportunity. If I hadn't been sensitive to that, I would have walked right past. I'd have probably said, Would you move over so I can get through? You know, as often happens. And so that's what I want. I want to be sensitive to that kind of thing. And to me, that's the marching order in these three steps. It's to get down to the business of putting this into so that I'm an active agent of change and not just a recipient and think it's all about me.
That I'm geared to be in maximum service to God and those around me. And that's what I want to be in. And so, to me, that's why I think these are enormously important action steps. And it really affects you. I'll tell you, I'm about to quit here in a minute. I'm about one-tenth through, so what the heck. I'll tell you one other thing of how that works. Good speakers were in the Caribbean. I was going to Fargo, North Dakota in January, and these guys were all south. And so I fly to Fargo.
I'm in O'Hare in Chicago, not one of my favorite spots. And I'm— I thought that was you. So I'm going down the concourse, and I discovered I was grinning. Well, you don't grin in airports. That is just not protocol in an airport. Somebody put a net on you if you're going down. And so… So I realized that I was going down a grinning, and I caught myself and put on the game face. And I thought about, why on earth am I grinning about going to Fargo, North Dakota and slothing through Chicago O'Hare?
Well, what I was grinning in spite of that. I was grinning because, and I analyzed it a little bit, there are three things, and they really have to do with each step shape, the kind of a way to live. There are three things that I thought about. One is that I was exactly who I was supposed to be. No sham, no pretense, no big-shot-ism, no get out of my way, I'm in a hurry stuff. I realized who I was, that I'm a guy, just like I said, I'm a guy who ought to be dead, been given a new life.
And I was exactly who I was supposed to be, just a guy going to try to do some service somewhere. That's all. Just one human being. And so that's who I am. And second, I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I told folks in Fargo I would be there, and that's what I was doing. And so my purpose was perfectly in line with what my primary purpose
[00:35:00]
is. And so to me, that's what this does, that it produces not only survival, but it produces real joy. And I thought about that a lot of times about that, because it is a little ironic to be joyous in that kind of a setting, because you're supposed to be a little mad. I'm going to be mad in Miami. I've got to walk about a mile to get to my gate. I'm already mad. But we'll get by. And I'll say about that one time that we had a young fella from North Carolina that played a little basketball. The name was Michael Jordan, and he now owns a team in Charlotte. And he was in a game one time, and I really identify with that. He was in a game, and he couldn't miss.
You know what I mean? I mean, he could throw it over his head from midcourt and he'd go in. He just couldn't miss. So he went down and did some circus shot, and he trotted back up to court, and he looks over at the opposing bench and gave it that, excuse the expression, Polish salute. Don't ask me, man. Don't ask me. I don't know why it's going in, but it's just going. It's one of those days, eh? And I thought about that later.
That's exactly what he was later called that, being in a zone. That term, he almost introduced it to our society to describe that kind of an event. And what he was doing that day on the basketball court is exactly what I was doing in O'Hare. I was in a zone. It had nothing to do with where I was and all this kind of junk. It had to do with being in tune with who I am and what I'm supposed to be doing, practicing this way of life in a way that might have use and purpose. And so to me, that's what—this is not heavy lifting here—that to me, this is just a way of putting this into a real productive kind of role so that I can do exactly what the book's talking about.
My real purpose is to be of maximum service to God and those around us, and that's what I want to do. That's what I want to do. And I hope you do too. I hope very much you do too. When you get back to your town, you won't have to look long. When you get back to your town and you get in your group, whether it's Al-Anon or Alateen, when you get into that group, take a look. If you get into that community, take a look, and look at things that you think can be better than they are.
You know, take a look at what happens to people trying to get into detox these days. They'll get turned away as often as they get taken in. If you don't like that, take a look at what could be done as an alternative that would be more effective. That's, I guess you'd call it a homework assignment. But it's a way to put legs on what we're talking about, so you don't live and say, Gee, that's a nice conversation. Yeah, I'd like to see it turn into some action. I'd like to see it result in planting a seed somewhere or getting something going.
So just take a look, you know, and see. If you don't like what you see, try to understand why it's like that, and then come up with something that'll be more effective. And if you do, we'll all be better off. Thanks.