Audio
Transcript
Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 940 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: william-s-settling-for-less-when-more-was-what-i-already-had-na-date-unknown-archive-940.mp3 Duration: 00:35:33
============================================================
Our next speaker is William S. from the Battlefield Area. My name is William. Here through God's grace and God's mercy, what I'm most grateful for is just for the day I don't have the desire to use anybody or anything. Right? So I'm like real honored to be here. You know, and it's been a wonderful journey to get to this moment. See? You know, so I'm glad that I had a chance to share with my sister here.
I want to thank the special events, the Appalachian area for thinking of me, for having me down, and I'm just grateful. You know what I mean? I was thinking, I was sitting there, I don't know where I want to go. I was sitting there, I was listening to sis, and I heard a lot of wonderful things. You know what I mean? In fact, sometimes you ever just sit here and you get to a meeting and then somebody starts to do their thing, and as soon as they finish, you be like, shit, we got a nice way of closing with that. You know what I mean? Listen, because you know you almost just kind of want to get bailed out. You know what I'm saying? You know. And so I was listening to sis, and there was something that jumped out to me in the 11th step, and it says, right here, it says, let me just work this out and then we can do our thing.
It says, sometimes the best quality that we have to promote God's will is a sense of humor. And then it talked about, I heard another saying somewhere where it says, because sometimes we get so caught up and consumed in our differences, you know what I mean, and what separates us, and the fact that we look different, and the fact that we like different, and we have all this other stuff that says that one thing that we have in common, the biggest piece of unity in our fellowship is that we all smile in the same language.
And so when you think about that, then you start to understand that we're not so different. You know what I mean? And so now, this topic, when, look, Vicki, I hadn't even known the topic, and so she emailed me the topic, and I just looked at it, and I was like, what? I said some choice words. So the topic is, it says, selling for less when it was more than I had. Selling for less when it was more than I had. And how do I get there?
So I went into the sixth step. And it talks about here, it says, we probably thought that either that life didn't put us in a place where we could become what we dreamed of, that we were innately incapable of rising to a higher place. And what that said to me was that, like, there's something about a guy that will accept anything to change his condition, or something about a guy that will make the things that he thinks are important to him be more about your values than my values.
There's something about a situation, look, it's got to be a horrible situation to be in a fellowship full of people who love you and not want to hug them. It's got to be a horrible thing to show up here and have all that I need around me, and look, in a step-working program and not work a step. It's got to be a horrible thing when I allow my clean time to alienate me from newcomers because I start thinking that, you know, I don't want to be around them.
Like, I forget, you know what I mean, the amnesia that it talks about in Recovery Relapse, that I forget the amount of effort it took to get to the level of freedom I have right now. And so it's got to be a horrible thing when you come in here, where you can come in a meeting in an area, man, so rich with recovery and not see, like, the predecessors show up because some kind of way they've alienated themselves to the point where they can't come in a meeting and get honest about the condition they're in right now.
Play it again. Play it again. That's Hawk, man. He's going to be dancing later. I'm going to be right behind him and shit. So, look, so I'm here, man, because I thought about it, and I was looking at the topic, and I thought about not just simply what I was selling for, but, like, my belief system, a belief system, a fractured belief system. It talks about in our literature that we're fractured personality people.
And so what it talks about is that, like, if we're fractured and we're fractured personality people, that the first thing I need to do, we're going to do this like we've got to do it, you know what I mean, is that we've got to get here first and we've got to accept the condition that we're in right now with our belief system.
[00:05:03]
Understand that the thing that's the most broken thing about you is what you believe and the fact that you have led you everywhere you've been and that you no longer can blame people, places, and things for your condition because nobody took you there and nobody made you do it. Then you get into the second step, and the second step talks about, and it works how and why, it says that the thing about addicts, you know what I mean, the biggest issue we have is that we have a tendency to live based on our belief system.
And so if it's saying that in the second step, what it's saying to me is that the thing that I need to first buy into is that not that I'm just like some sick joker just trying to get better, but, like, I've got a belief system that'll still have me in a jackpot situation on any given day. So then I get to the third step, and the third step talks about turn it over. Now, when we got here, before we got all this cute literature and stuff, we used to just read the step and then write on it, and then we got worksheets, and we started sharing worksheets around, and so, you know, we got into that.
And on the worksheet, it started saying all this cute stuff, and it says, you know, turning it over, you know what I mean, it's kind of like taking your child to the child care and turning them to the care of the provider, and then going on and doing whatever work you got to do, and then coming back and getting your kid. Well, what we understand when we stay here is that what we turn over in the third step is our belief system.
Because what we find out the longer you stay here is that if you take your belief into a fourth step, you won't have the courage necessary to do the self-appraisal that's absolutely essential in order for you to grow like you need to, and you'll continue to choose jackpot situations and stuff, even with clean time. So now I go into this fourth step, and I start to take a look at who I am, and I don't really like it, but it's okay because I'm running on your juice.
And I get a chance to sit down with somebody, and I get a chance to evaluate who I am because they get to say me too. And then I get to the sixth step, and when I get to the sixth step, what happens is that, look, look, here's the thing we don't expect. I get to the sixth step with all this stuff that you just exposed to me, and then you give me the belief system, then I turn it over to you in the third step right back, and then I find myself trying to fix me all by myself with my belief system, and I still ain't got the juice.
Then I get to the seventh step where I'm finally now on my knees where the topic says that it's hard to stumble when you're already on your knees, because now I'm on my knees saying, God, look, I can't do this no more. We know when you're on the sixth step because you're cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. You ain't got to tell nobody you work in the sixth step. We already see it. The beautiful thing about the addict who has the clean time is that they can love you where they at because they've been there, unless they ain't work in those steps.
They ain't screaming, free at last, and they ain't free. They ain't there. They got clean time. You get clean time, and you don't have the steps. You don't have a step that tells you that you should be able to have some peace and some joy on the inside with or without all the listed things that you should be having joy and peace with or without. And so you get to a point like this addict, where I come from Jersey, and I move to Virginia in 2000, and I move into that spot.
I get a job that's, here's the preface, any story that anybody can tell that seems like it's a Gucci story. God has a tendency of blessing you with stuff that he already knows you don't have the integrity to maintain, so he can elevate your integrity by allowing you to go through the trials it takes to hold on to what he gave you. integrity to maintain so he can elevate your integrity by allowing you to go through the trials it takes to hold on to what he gave you.
So what he'd do is he'd bring me from Jersey. Sometimes you've got to get lifted out your little fishbowl of recovery, surrounded by the people who will co-sign the nonsense that you've been sharing with them since you had a date clean, and get thrown out into the pond where there's a whole lot more going The broader the base thing takes on new meaning when you leave out of your security are the people that you call your homeboys and your homegirls.
I mean your home group, my bad. And so when you leave that, and you get into a place where now you don't have nobody else to depend on but this God you say you got a relationship with. But he ain't going to come down and walk around and give you the best decisions to make, because what he understands is that I got to bless you in such a way. And look, we don't waste a whole lot of energy in here trying to avoid pain, because it says the more be revealed that we grow through pain.
And often find that such a crisis is a gift, so we find ourselves gravitating towards that. What's important is that we need to go towards, you know what I mean, the fire. Because if we don't go through this, and if we don't find out how to get through this, I was talking to a sponsor the other night, and he said, you know, he said, well look, sponsor, I've read this, and this is kind of in conflict.
This is kind of in conflict. You ever have a sponsor and then all of a sudden they get a, you know, a couple of steps
[00:10:03]
and now they want to like challenge you on everything? You know what I mean? He said, look, he said, sponsor, wait a minute. I said, look, I said, sometimes, I said, look, man, what you got to understand is that the longer you stay here, what happens is that what you find out is that when you find out who you are is that you got to learn how to get out of whatever your current condition is clean. And he said, but that's it, that can't be possibly it.
He said, that's not what you taught me when I was new. I said, well, what did I teach you when you was new? Because sometimes you got to find out if the filter, if they've changed the filter. You know what I mean, so I got, so I'm open now. You know what I mean, I'm like, okay, come on and share, you know what I mean, what you got. He said, what can I do? I said, oh, okay, God made you read that like 30 days in a row.
You know what I mean, that God's going to allow me to go through stuff, you know what I mean, and I said, well, what makes you think that you'll be exempt? Do you have a second step? Well, you know I got a second step. I said, what does it say in the second step? It says there's a second step that clean time don't exempt you from the pain. I said, no, I said, so what do you got to go through? So here's the one, settling for less when more was what you already had.
So you decide, like this addict, that, you know, this marriage thing just ain't paying off. You've been married for six years. You've been in the world and shed your ass off on the glory of integrity, and integrity being a consistent application of spiritual principles, regardless of the circumstances and consequences. And you've shed your ass off, and you know where it's at in the book. And then, like, about five years into your marriage, it ain't working out like you think you need to work it out.
And then you think that you gave her a chance, but you won't let her off the hook like you let the newcomer off the hook that relapses and comes back. You don't cut her or him a break, and so because she did some shit that you ain't okay with, you decide it'd be a good idea to go outside the relationship and do it to somebody else. And then she finds out. Because that's what happens. They find out.
They find out that you were cheating on somebody when you had, like, five years clean, and your girlfriend started calling the psychic hotline, and then when she came back to you and told you that Cleo said that you had cheated on her, and then finally, like, something, you was convicted. Here's a new one. You was convicted on the inside, and so you admitted it. So that the same two major pieces of our disease is the obsession and compulsion that once you start driving without, with a suspended license, that you can't stop, that you knew as soon as it got suspended, you needed to change the behavior, but because you couldn't change the behavior, what you find yourself doing is you find yourself looking over the shoulder, trying to figure out when did I think it was okay to ride around with an expired license, and what you're looking for is relief, and the relief, the only relief you're going to find is sirens, because sometimes you got to get knocked on your backside for you to stop a behavior that you find yourself totally compulsed over where you can't stop.
You start to choose, you know what I mean, that it would be a good idea for you to do whatever it is that you're doing that you already know is going to cause you pain, but because you have a period of time where you've experienced it before, and then you had a consequence that you dealt with it, and then you asked for relief in the sixth and seventh step, and then you got relief, and then what happens is you've been relieved for so long that you forgot what the pain was like back when you did it back when you had five years clean, or ten years clean, and then sixteen years clean, the amnesia kicks in, you know what I mean, you forgot what it took to get to the level of freedom you got right now, and what you do is you choose something that's worse off than what you're already working with, because you already got it going on, you're a happy married dude, you're a good sharing ass, you've been all over the place talking about how good it is to be who you are, and then you choose to be somebody other than who you become.
So when Whitey comes and calls me and says, is your name on your email such and such and such, and right away when they start questioning you, you say, well why are you asking me shit like that? I don't know, is that my email name? You know, what is it? She said, and is that girl's email such and such and such? Now you know you busted. So then you sitting there with the stupid look with your clean date.
[00:15:06]
Now we got to share this stuff, man, because there's newcomers in the room right now that's smart as hell with the liturgy but don't have a practical application to get through that currency. You gotta learn. My best show is MacGyver, because MacGyver could just walk in any situation, become in a serious situation, find some kind of way to put together what he needs to put together to get through. And what you gotta learn how to do is MacGyver your steps to get through your current situation.
We don't spend enough time sharing with the newcomer how hard it is sometimes with clean time to get through what we're going through, because we're still walking around here fronting like everything is okay when everybody around us see that it ain't, including the newcomer. They're just waiting for you to fall on your ass with your spiritual ass. He ain't shit, I told you he wasn't shit. I don't care, he got a couple hundred tapes.
Good sharing ass, I want to share, no you don't. So that's what happens. So now look, so the choice is to move is to say okay now let's leave the security of like living a good life, you know what I mean, let's leave the good life and let's move in with Boo. Boo ain't working with wife he's working with, that's why she's Boo. No there's a reason that she's Boo. Sometimes you got to just let shit marinate for a minute.
He moved in with Boo. So you move in with Boo. And you choose something, even though what you already had was already better. You said share on the topic, right? So you choose Boo, because Boo got it going on. Boo ain't got the recovery weight on her that wifey do. And all of a sudden you know you got a Mustang now and you got to be cute and you got to get you a young thing. He ain't got it. Boo ain't got it.
I mean if you're going to buy the blue pills you want to at least make sure that they worth it. Boo got it going on, Boo said daddy. Because Boo call you daddy. Wifey your age she ain't got to call you daddy, but Boo call you daddy. She said daddy, don't forget to take your pill. You ain't got to worry about it, you're going to get lucky tonight daddy. With or without, the 11 steps start talking about.
Talking about starting to learn how something happens when we start to mature into who God wants us to be. And how sometimes our choices take us out of the grace of the position that he's placed us in. And then we find out that all the lessons that we've learned and all the effort that we've put into becoming who he wants us to be that we become willing with clean time to put what he's given us aside for Boo.
Now don't be looking like y'all got bailed out or something. Y'all got Boo's too. You might be sitting next to Boo. Boo might be across the room. Don't raise your hand or laugh too hard, I don't want to get you in trouble. You work that shit out on your own time. Call your sponsor later or something. I'll be at the dance and shit when you're dancing with Wifey and Boo's looking at you all funny. Because she's already allowed herself to become a second class citizen in the relationship with your clean date.
Sometimes we got to do that. Sometimes we got to do that. So Sis was talking about what evidence, because sometimes we got to share the evidence, the evidence that God is so good. Sometimes what you got to do then, and what I was sharing with my sponsor the other day, is that I say even after you come up with the great idea, even after you become front page news and narcotics anomalous in your area and everybody starts to look at you and start to say the things like he ain't, she ain't, who we thought he or she was, even though, because sometimes you got to be placed in a situation where you can have your bubble busted and stuff because you're of no use to the God you understand when you're remaining elevated among all the people that you're surrounded with.
In fact, there's a problem if you're the sharpest knife in your drawer.
[00:20:00]
There's a problem when you're the smartest person in the crowd you hang with. That means you got to start to broaden your base. Because what it means is that nobody's learning anything but everybody else. That's a problem when you always got to walk in the room and they say can you share. Why me? I got to come to the meetings late and leave early or else I'm going to end up being the person that's got to share something.
How about when I'm in pain and it's my turn? How come when I find out that I get clean time and I've developed a greater intellect I don't have to go to the dentist and sign all over again? What happens when you get here, man, and you're not surrounded by people who can help you? What happens when your help got a clean time requirement? When you realize and you start looking around and you become so judgmental of people that you're going through that you would rather be stuck than get free because you ain't got enough clean time to help me.
So you want to go find somebody else to help you but you already got it good because you're already surrounded by people who know you well enough to help you choosing something else when you already got it good. I got to go to another area, I'm going to Roanoke. Gosh, where is that? I heard Daryl is there and shit. That one's for you, Daryl. I'm going to recover with his recovering ass. I ain't fucking with the Lynchburg and the Seven Mountains or whatever hills or whatever y'all call it I can tell y'all live in the mountains.
All y'all got big calves and shit. I don't know what the hell is going on. All I'm saying is everybody looking shit. We were just talking about that, wasn't we? So here I am in evidence, man. I don't waste a lot of time. I really just came to have some fun and to support. The evidence comes, man, and your turn comes. Sometimes you go through something else and what we have is we have a God that's so awesome that he can take what you think was a bad idea and turn it to the good.
Sometimes you go through something and go through the most hell to help the next person that's watching you because you're always being watched. Always. What people are watching is now after your turn's come. Do you leave the area in shame or do you walk around with your head up and say I did that and I claim that? Sometimes the best thing you can do is claim your bad ideas for yours. We already know it was your idea.
It wasn't her fault. You were booed and it was your fault. Because what happens is that we get a disease. We get a defect in that sixth and seventh step that we get to acknowledge. We get the shortcoming. We get on our knees. We get surrendering and hoping that God will arrest that defect. Living so happy, joyous, and free, we got the new car, we got the house, we got wifey, the second house, all her shirts and shit.
I was listening. All them new shirts and all that kind of stuff. We got boo-boos and babies and all that stuff in the house. Then what happens is that thing that got arrested gets paroled. It sneaks up on you. You're so busy being consumed. A hawk was talking about earlier about that little game where you're trying to beat the thing. How about the disease gets so sophisticated that that thing has been arrested for so long and it's found more sophisticated ways of coming at you.
By the time you realize you've been molested by the thing that had been arrested years ago, that you'll have to look back at when you was obsessing over it because you'll already be so consumed in compulsion that you'll need another first step to get free. There ain't no way out but another first step. There ain't no way out but another surrender. The beautiful thing about our steps and the reason why they come in sets of threes and stuff is because honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness continues to be revisited.
We start to understand that every step that requires us to be honest is a step that you've got to do for you. Every step that talks about open-mindedness means that we need somebody else. The second step is not the only step that was designed to create a dependency on a fellowship. There are other steps that deal with open-mindedness. As we develop our relationship with God, every third step that goes in levels like that requires God.
It ain't nothing nobody else can do. The reason why we go through stuff and the reason why we share about it over and over again in meetings and nobody seems to be able to give us any relief is because God needs to let you see that after asking everybody for help me, help me, help me, and after none of them can help you and then he helps you, he wants you to know that nobody else gets the credit for the relief you just got.
That's why we go through. Don't matter. I know your clean date is your jackpot. I already know you hit the jackpot when you got clean. I already know that your clean date is the only lottery ticket you ever need. I know that.
[00:25:00]
I already know that you've got to go through and I know it's painful when you've got to keep going through stuff because you don't want to go through stuff because you've been working so hard not to go through some stuff and the literature still says that we grow through pain and recovery and often find that such a crisis is a gift. Stop trying to avoid your crisis. You think what they said is everybody gets their turn, that's about everybody else?
It's your turn. When's your turn going to come? No, we know you're already getting your turn coming. We all see it. Why don't you tell us about it? Why don't you get free? How about the best message you can give? It talks about in the gesture of the day that we start to share with newcomers about how they get the chance and the luxury by staying clean that when you get key tags and all that does is puffy up the nice pink cloud that they get to float around on and everything just continues to get better and better and better.
Then what the gesture of the day says is that we need to then start to follow them for when they fall so that we can catch them and that it would be much better if we just got honest with them from the very start. Tell them the truth. It hurts sometimes. But our best growth comes from the hurt. You went, but we know. Just get honest. We've just been waiting for you to get honest with them. That's why people show up at some of your anniversaries.
They just want to see if you're going to get honest about all that shit you did all year. You wonder why you're meeting us standing room only. This is my motherfucking anniversary. They love me. Now they just want to know if you're going to tell the truth. They're in the back of the room still. He's a whiner. He's going to lie. He's going to lie. Oh, shit, he got honest. He got a shot. That's what happens.
So I'm here, man. I'm here, man, because things are working out, man. What I'm finding, man, is that the choices that I'm making, you know what I mean, that I have a chance. Man, if you stay clean long enough for you, you get a chance to see you come through. It's nothing like seeing you come through. It's nothing like getting to the point where you get to be home and you get to look at you coming through.
And you start to realize for your own self that you become your own evidence, that you don't need to come in here in the second step hoping that somebody else will share the stuff that you practiced in the mirror that you was going to share tomorrow night in the meeting. I ain't the only one. The ones laughing beside you. They was like me. We used to be up at night and we used to be in the mirror. Tomorrow, I'm going to share.
And then we get to the meeting and we still can't because we're the same punk that showed up. And then somebody else shares the same stuff we've been practicing in the mirror. And all we can think of is what a coincidence. It's not a coincidence. And it's time you tell your story. So where's that, man? It's like everything is just getting better. You know what I mean? You know, where I'm at right now is I had some things going on.
I had an opportunity to come down to Roanoke a couple years ago, and I was honored and privileged to be the opening speaker for the area of Virginia's convention. And on that same week, my grandmother fell. And she couldn't remember a phone number or anything to tell anybody until three days after being in the hospital. And so when she finally was able to remember somebody that she can call and who she was, you know what I mean, they finally contacted me.
And I started running back and forth to Jersey. And what I found out was what I had to do by running back and forth to Jersey is I had to clean out a house she lived in for almost 40 years. And so when I cleaned the house out, then because she couldn't remember and she could never go home, I had to become power of attorney for not only her financial stuff, but her health care. You know what I mean?
And so here I am. You know what I mean? I want to walk around this fellowship with a frown on my face because I got all these responsibilities. How dare you walk around here with a frown on your face when you get an opportunity to practice God's will? We always want to share some good stuff, but we don't want to live a good message. Because if you want to have a good message to carry, you got to first get your turn.
And so like two weeks ago on my way to, or however many weeks ago, I think two weeks ago, it just seems like it happened so fast. It was the weekend of the Ocean City Convention. It was on Friday and I got a phone call. My grandmother's been in this rehab facility for over a year and a half. And like they called and said that, you know, she's been denied by Medicaid and because she has life insurance and that's an asset and all this cute shit.
I didn't know nothing about that. I'm just a guy that got high. I don't know about all that stuff. But that's not an excuse because I got a resource. And they said we denied her and if you don't get this paperwork to us and if you don't liquidate these accounts and if you don't go and pre-plan her funeral so that they can use that life insurance in advance, then what we're going to do is we're going to deny her and start the process of getting her out of our facility.
out of our facility. And so just when I think I got a break, just when I think that things is about to work out, now I'm down there, and I'm in Jersey, and I'm in Camden at Carl Miller's, and I'm planning my grandmother's funeral, man, and it's morbid. And it hurts, man, because I don't
[00:30:01]
like how it feels on the inside, you know what I mean? Knowing that I got to take care of somebody who used to carry me around their hip. But it's my turn. And so my sponsor says that, look, when you get your turn, and you going through it, and you got a smile on your face, and people say, what are you smiling about, because if I was going through that shit, I'd be frowning, and I'd be going crazy, and he says, sometimes you gotta smile when you're going through something, because people need to know you can go through some stuff with a little bit of integrity.
He said, live your second step, practical application of your second step, the reason why I'm smiling is because I gotta convince my mind that I'm okay, so if I walk around with a smile on my face, I'll walk around and act as if until my body believes we're okay. So if I'm shaking a leg tonight, knowing that I got some shit going on, if I got a big smile on my face, it's okay, because I'm working it out, because if you're watching me, for when your turn comes, I got some good information for you, but I gotta go through before I can help you.
So that's where it's at. And it hurts sometimes. I wanted to run, I couldn't wait to get to Lynchburg, I said, man, I just want to go. This is getting to be a bit much, and they're taking forever to get everything, and then on Friday, right before I got on the highway to come here, the packet came in the mail with all the stuff I need to take to Medicaid, and I'm like, and then, you know, and the smile becomes genuine when plans start to work out.
See? When your turn comes, you choose something, sometimes you gotta choose the thing that don't look so free, because it's in your pain, you get your freedom. It's a lot of time trying to be famous people in an anonymous program. We forget that the people that bring the most to our program are the people that don't even know they're helping people. People that just answer the phone when somebody calls.
The people that, when somebody's new and now they got 30 days, they can look at you and say, man, I remember you were the first one to help me, and so I kept coming back. We gotta help people, man, regardless of what happens afterwards. We gotta remember to hug people that are new, man, and don't forget that when you got here, you stunk too. You might still stink. I mean, but it's okay. That means you're working.
You're working up sweats and stuff. Newcomers gotta see that. They gotta know, because you know, when we got here, you understand that newcomers only believe in what they can see. I went and bought a Sharon outfit. They say, well, why you buy a Sharon outfit? I say, because there's somebody new in here that don't believe this program works unless we get up here and we look nice. They say, well, shit, she got a nice shape off this stuff.
I couldn't spend five dollars on a haircut when I got here. She got a little bit of jewelry on. She's smiling and getting through. Maybe if I do what she did, I'll get what she got. That's why we get dressed up, so you can know. I don't care if you got to go to Salvation Army to get it. That's good shopping. Get what you can afford, boo-boo. It's okay. It's okay. We don't care if you got the, look, we know all them bags ain't real.
It's okay. Buy that fake shit until you get the real shit. We know that jewelry ain't real. Don't wear it so much. If you're going to sweat, don't wear it. We know that ain't your hair, but that's how you bought it, it's yours. Newcomers is watching you. So in closing, man, know that somebody's always watching you. Know that whatever you do, that if you have the courage to come in here and share where you're at, that you'll give them the courage to do what they didn't have the courage to do when they got here.
Our job and our purpose here is we never get relieved of the responsibility of helping somebody else. And if we continue to do that kind of stuff, and if we continue to share, then when your turn comes, no matter how painful it is, whether you're burying your father, whether you're losing your wife and your house and the car and stuff, and you've just been evicted, and you just can't seem to get it going on, whether you just be done with some responsibility that you didn't think you man or woman enough to handle, just keep talking about it.
Because what God will do is He'll continue to bless you with the understanding that He knows that you're going to develop the character it takes to get through just one more thing. So look, I don't know if, and I don't want to do that, Usman used to say, he said, you know, we come in here and we say, look, I hope that I shared well, and I helped somebody, and I hope my outfit, you know, for real, I look nice.
You know you spend a whole lot of time in the mirror. You know you look nice. Stop acting like you're all surprised when somebody say you look nice. You just spent an hour in the mirror looking nice, huh? You know you shared, you got honest, then you know you carried your message, our 12-step
[00:35:00]
guarantees it, that if you share from the heart, man, you'll touch somebody. There's no way to decide who's going to be touched. All you know is that you're going to touch somebody, and sometimes when you understand and identify that when you're sleeping with the enemy, sometimes there's nobody else in the bed, then maybe the message today is for you. Just get honest for yourself, and then go eat some barbecue and dance and some shit.
I'm going to keep coming back. Thanks for letting me share y'all.