Today, I’d like to talk about a word which I consider very essential, not only in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, but in the program of daily living for all people. It’s a word that is commonly associated as a business term, but it’s a word, again, that we all should take heed of. That word is inventory. The fourth step of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous brings this word into focus right away at the outset of our program, for that fourth step tells us that we, you and I, should take a fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Now, I looked up the word inventory, as I always do when I’m in doubt about what certain things mean. An inventory, as described in the Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary, says this, “To make an appraisal as of one’s skills, characteristics, goals, fortunes, assets, and liabilities.” Now, I guess that’s a pretty damn good description.

Those of us in business know that no successful business can operate without inventory, without knowing what is selling, what is not selling, what to buy, and what not to buy. And of course, our own personal lives need an inventory, what’s good for us and what’s bad for us. Now, at the point we are now, a group of men and women interested in the problem of alcoholism, I’d like to discuss this word inventory as applied to our particular problem. Unfortunately, most of us who are in this room today, with the exception of the guests, have arrived at a point in our life where we had better take a goddamn good look at what has happened, what is happening, and what might possibly happen. In other words, it’s time for you and I to take an inventory. We are past that point where we can live on past laurels, on past heroics, and great deeds of yesteryear. Society today is only interested in the now, and that’s all you and I should be concerned with, is the now.

What makes the now so important is simply because it is the only period of time in which you can furnish definite proof. You can talk all you want about the past, but there’s hardly any way that we can prove the truth of your statement. You can talk all you want about your dreams of the future, but if there’s something that hasn’t happened yet, you can’t furnish proof. But if you walk like you talk today, then today you can prove, for that’s the now. Now, in this inventory where you and I take a look at ourselves, there is one specific prime necessary requirement. That requirement, I’m sure most of you know, is the highest form or the highest level of self-honesty that you can achieve. For all you’re going to do business with in this inventory is your life, not mine. I am not particularly interested in the inventory of anybody’s life who sits in this room today. And likewise, I don’t think you’re particularly interested in an inventory of my life.