I ALWAYS HAVE HELP A man who has had more than his share of trouble – alcoholism, shattered marriage, tragic losses – tells anonymously how he manages to face life, one day at a time.

A friend of mine recently sent me a called Alcoholics Anonymous, and my eye fell greeting card with the title, “How to Live in on a remarkable passage. Before I tell you what These Troubled Times,” and the answer printed it said, let me assure the reader that he doesn’t inside: “Keep Breathing.” If not very helpful it have to be an alcoholic to proceed with this was at least appropriate. As I write this I’m in as article; everyone concerned with open-minded warty a financial pickle as a small businessman living may find something of interest. This is could contrive – broke, no property, heavy family what the authors promised: responsibilities, head of a small concern which is “We are going t know a new freedom and also broke, with creditors expecting in a few a new happiness. Feelings of uselessness and months to be paid $20,000 it hasn’t got. Less self-pity…fears of other people and of economic than this has driven highly strung people to insecurity…will leave us. We will intuitively know breakdown and even suicide, and I confess I am how to handle situations which used to baffle us. a little uneasy. But because of a limited grasp of Our whole attitude and outlook on life will a philosophy which members of a celebrated change.” secret society call The 24-Hour Plan, I’m fairly confident of pulling through. I decided to try it-what could I lose? Twelve years later I may ask: Do I ever feel Well, Now, you say, this is not so much useless and sorry for myself? Has fear of people to shout about. Lots of people carry on through and poverty left me? Do I always know intuitively difficulties. Yes, I would reply, and lot’s of people what to do? Such perfection has, alas, evaded don’t. We have 18,000 suicides a year and me; but this I can say: the extravagant promise 500,000 asylum inmates. Commitments to state has come true to an astonishing degree. The mental hospitals have doubled since the end of seemingly impossible has, indeed, happened-to World War II. Every day legally sane people me and to many. Some 200,000 of us have swallow a number of tons of sedatives and wash known these benefits to some extent. The them down with several million gallons of foundation on which we all build is a way of soothing alcoholic beverages, and we’re still looking at life which, as previously observed, we jittery. If anyone knows of what the ancients call The 24-Hour Plan. In essence the plan is to used to call “an ever-present help in trouble,” it’s become aware that, if you take on the job of a public duty, as I see it, to pass it along. Such a living one day at a time, you’ll make it. But help came to me twelve years ago. I had there’s a good deal more to it than this; it has cracked up under pressures which are not subtlety and paradox, corollaries and uncommon in our times. My wife had taken up derivatives. I suppose the best way to tell you with another man, my business was in ruins, and about it is to look back over the past twelve I was trying to get fished out of a morass created years and tell about some of my days. by twenty-five years of problem drinking. My mental state was such that I couldn’t even ask On a cold and rainy November night I for a job, much less hold one. I thought went to my first meeting of people enrolled in the frequently of suicide. Then, half-doubting and Plan. They met in a Y.M.C.A. meeting room, a half-hoping, I took up with some people who basement cubicle with cracked plaster and a were supposed to know how to lay hold of a single unshaded bulb. That first evening I carried situation of this kind. They gave me a book away little more than a vague impression that

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these people were trying to understand what life period when I have had a lot to do with people was mainly about and to live it by workable and am ready for a little solitude. It may sound principles. As time went on I discovered that my strange at first, but this complete break from first impression had been correct. I had enrolled people, this getting by one’s self and trying to in a school for living, high in it’s standards, stern know a day is, to many of us, one of the beyond belief with backsliders. If you passed essential points of the plan, high in dividends. your exams you were marvelously rewarded; I like to get up when it is still dark on the punishment for failure-alcoholic relapse-was day I have chosen and watch for dawn-the self-administered and sometimes grim. There beginning. The way dawn comes is always a was Harry, the handsome state cop who came special and fine excitement, too often missed. around off and on, but never seemed to grasp Things seem to know it’s coming; the quiet of the main, big ideas. One day he pulled the the night seems to deepen a little just before the state’s car off the road and drew the state’s first light. Then the light changes and the preautomatic out of it’s holster and blew out his dawn twilight is there, a filtered presence. I think brains. There was Ed, guiding spirit of a good- of the great arc of light advancing over the earth sized sales organization, urbane and capable, and of all the things greeting it: a forest full of but clumsy with the simple lessons taught at birds in song, a rooster crowing somewhere. school. One day he took a train from New York Presently the sun breaks the horizon, rapidly to Philadelphia, rode an elevator up to the top of clears the earth and begins its climb. a tall hotel and jumped off. There was Jane, All day I keep track of the sun. If I can warned about the danger of brain edema, who manage it, I walk on a wooded road or along a pushed her luck too far in an alcoholic river or lake or the sea; or I drive to a distant experiment, lost her mind and never got it all place where nobody knows me. I have cleared back. There were others, tragic, unforgettable, my project with my family-who understand that teaching vital lessons by their failures. And there apartness is as much of family life as were inspiring successes. These last, I gratefully togetherness-and have arranged that business report, were predominant. demands be not pressing; then I can give myself In time, just by being around the people to the day. Noon comes. At sea the navigators who were “on the program,” I began to have are watching through their sextants; they check some ideas about why we have emotional their chronometers and know where they are. stresses and how The 24-Hour Plan sees us Sunset, twilight, dark, the moon and through. People break down, I am quite sure, for stars-I begin to know a little where I am too. All the same reason animals in laboratories do-too the day I have not thought of people, but of earth great expectations, followed by to severe and sun, daylight and dark. When thoughts of disappointments, too often repeated. The 24- people intrude, I try to choose the people of Hour Plan cushions such shocks by encouraging whom I will think. I pick solitary, day-conscious us to gear our hopes to what may reasonably be people-the psalmist lifting his eyes to the hills, expected of the day in which we find ourselves. from whence came his help, the young prophet This brings us directly to the question: walking in the desert and encountering his What is a day, and what may one reasonably destiny, the poet considering the lake country of expect of it? Of course, our ordinary days vary England, the physicist perceiving that space is according to our involvement. Now and then, curved. All are people who have made The 24however, it’s rewarding to take a day, strip it of Hour Plan’s big discovery-that man’s rational all its nonessentials and get acquainted with it in poise is related to his awareness of time and its pristine essence. A day, the dictionary says, place, earth and sun. is the period of the earth’s revolution on its axis. Sometimes there is a great moment of One of the finest things that can happen to a full knowledge of being an earth creature and person, say devotees of The 24-Hour Plan, is belonging, wholly content. This delicious instant really to come to know a day. is often reported by those who have known the You have to pick your time, though, and plan-by any name-in depth. It may be described be in the mood. The best time for me is after a as a sudden intuition that the whole of creation

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is offered for you, that you are a part of a cosmic despite our misunderstandings, I loved her. It creative current, secure. One is not always so took me a wretched year to accept her fortunate as to know this moment on the day determination to carry through a divorce. The one has chosen. But a moment comes when plan, as well as the famous A.A. prayer for one knows it’s time for the return to people and serenity to accept things we can’t change and the hurly-burly, to see what contribution one can for courage to change things we can, saw me make, refreshed. through this valley. The 24-Hour Plan is wonderfully flexible. Then quite unexpectedly, I rose to one of It encompasses whatever we may conclude, on the peaks. A neighbor woman had a bent for taking inventory in the light of our best matchmaking. She noted my dismal celibacy, understanding, is the major need of that day. It recalled a young divorcee who lived with her provides for the rhythmic, pulsating quality of three youngsters in a neighboring suburb, and life, the thing that Arnold Toynbee, wrote notes to both of us. I called on the young acknowledging that one day’s need may not be lady. It was a click from our first meeting over a the same as another’s, called the principle of Sunday-afternoon cup of hot chocolate. A year withdrawal and return. Sometimes the difficulty later we were married and ever since have is not too great involvement with people but the known the great happiness of marital harmony opposite-too much of being by ourselves. and devotion. The plan divides life into livable, Happy marriage, however, cannot ward manageable, daily units. This, indeed, was what off calamity, and presently I was to enter the made it so admirably suited to alcoholics. We deepest, blackest valley I have yet been called knew that swearing off forever was beyond us, upon to cross. I was careful not to allow my but abstinence for a single day was something friendship for the children of my first marriage, we could manage. The principle applies to a including a son, to lapse. A father’s hopes and whole catalogue of trying situations, having plans for his son-how long they incubate, even nothing to do with alcoholism. from his own boyhood, and how they hatch and The thing most likely to ruin any 24-hour soar! One night the phone rang, and I was stretch, we found, are fear and resentment. To summoned to the hospital to see my son after enjoy life we had to control these plagues. We an accident. The next day he died. I cannot tell acknowledged realistically that other people here what I felt during the following days and would sometimes make mistakes and wrong us, months, or say much about a lonely corridor that but we could not afford to let this make us afraid haunts my memory even now. But I can say that of them or chronically angry. When we tried daily the plan saw me through. to tidy up our own behavior, sweeping out the ashes of burned-out grudges and opening the Meanwhile, life, irrepressible, was beardoors to fresh opportunity, we found that ing upward toward another peak. A baby was on perhaps they had not decisively harmed us after the way. Carl Sandburg once said that a baby all. Resentments, replaced by new interests, was God’s idea that human life was worth while. died from lack of nourishment. Sandburg was right. When our little girl arrived, My twelve years on the plan have been even in our grief we found it good to look after full of emotional peaks and valleys. Because the the needs of this small and charming, this plan has never let me down, I have come to trust needing, trusting, appreciative person. it. After these heights and depths the I crossed the first of the valleys after the business ups and downs seemed almost antirefusal of my first wife to accept reconciliation. climactic. True, I coddled a whopping rage for a After my seemingly miraculous recovery from while when a boss fired me because I could not alcoholism it was a baffling reversal of share his views on local politics. I hit a giddy everything I had learned to expect of her, and peak when a new product I had concocted the justice of things. It seemed to me we had began to find favor with customers. And I been through the worst, that happiness was at slumped into another valley, or at least a gully, last ahead. I loved our children, our home and,

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when I misjudged demand and wound up The New Testament has some fine statements $20,000 in the hole. of the Plan: “Give us this day…Sufficient unto But nothing has yet happened in these the day…” My wife likes Ann Lindbergh’s Gift twelve years that has found the plan wanting. If From the Sea, with its special word for mothers it can produce this wonder for an alcoholic type and its cry to her sex, “Why have we been like myself-edgy, high-strung, mercurial, seduced into abandoning the timeless inner headstrong, conflict-prone and vain-what might it strength of woman?” I have found things in not do for a normal person, normally beset? It is John Cowper Powys’ A Philosophy of Solitude the lesson of my deepest heart that lets me say worth remembering: “People find to their truly that The 24-Hour Plan, the decision to astonishment that when they drop their eternal bargain for this day alone, is an ever-present striving and clutching, real happiness flows in help in trouble. upon them in a brimming flood-the art lies in the Our experience suggests that nobody embrace of those elemental accompaniments of can work the plan alone. Some sort of affiliation existence which as a rule are taken so stupidly with some human organization based on some for granted.” sort of idea that is at least global in scope is If my account of the plan seems to essential. We alcoholics have weekly meetings emphasize calamity it’s only because bad times devoted mainly to discussing ramifications of the always seem so much harder to manage than plan. All churches offer this primary call to the good. Surely we must not end the narrative transcendent. So do many fraternal orders. For without mentioning that an important part of the those who mistrust creeds, organizations like the plan is watching for those small delights-“those Unitarian Fellowship bring the challenge of elemental accompaniments of existence”-which cosmic thought without doctrinaire demands. life is always tossing our way. Service and literary clubs often are bridges to a One morning last winter I awoke with a realm of thought beyond the commonplace. All vague dread and discontent. The malaise these groups can provide the ingredient without persisted most of the day. During the afternoon which the plan cannot work-direct contact with the weather grew colder, and by the day’s end thinking people. the temperature had fallen thirty degrees. When Friends can be of enormous help. When I came home, my eight-year-old daughter I first undertook the plan I felt I didn’t have any. danced and tugged at my coattails, shouting, But friends appeared, and two of them-named, “Daddy, daddy, the pond’s frozen-take us by coincidence, Walter B. and Walter C.- skating!” I was about to plead too tired, but we contributed important thoughts. Walter C. helped were called to the table. After supper we all got me to understand the rewards of just being our skates and went to the pond. The moon quiet, quoting the Chinese proverb: “Muddy came up and made the big irregular oval and its water…if permitted to remain still…will gradually surrounding woods a glistening, blue-black-andbecome clear of itself.” The more practical white fairyland. It was a night of laughter, swift Walter B. took me to task one time-when I was gliding and spills-one I will always remember, trying to bull through an impossible situation-with and it came unexpectedly out of nowhere. these words: “Relax; give events a chance to go There have been many such times. One to work on your side.” day in late spring I heard the sound of a steam Some of my best friends in the plan have calliope. Now, playing a calliope is to me what been books. Here, as with any other kind of being President is to some people. They are friend, it is individual’s choice. I have liked about as common where I live as yaks are in Conquest of fear by Basil King, from its opening Iowa. My musical training never extended much line-“When I say that during most of my beyond a few boyhood piano lessons; actually to conscious life I have been prey to fears, I take it command the instrument of the river boats was for granted that I am expressing the case of the almost beyond my daydreams. Nevertheless, majority of people”-to that memorable assertion- there came this haunting desire. I followed the “The life principle is my principle; I cannot cut sound a few blocks, and there at the curb sat a myself off from it, it cannot cut itself off from me.” man playing the great machine, mounted on a

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wagon. I was sure that anyone owning such a weeks of waiting for a publisher to decide. One thing would be selective about who played it. evening he drove his car into his garage, closed Just the same I asked-shouting, so grand was the door and started the engine. This widow and the din-if I might try. children are now living well on the royalties and He smiled and nodded and moved over movie rights-the book was an international on the bench, and waved an inviting hand success. toward the keyboard. I stepped aboard, The $20,000 predicament described at approaching the big, hot pipes with awe. The the beginning of this article has given me a fine quivering, powerful thing now sat waiting my opportunity to “let events go to work on my side.” touch, its tense boiler hissing. I played Farmer in For a week or so it looked like certain the Dell over and over, the great steamboat bankruptcy-I was obliged to “accept the things I sounds whistling, fooping, boop-alooping over cannot change.” Then my principal creditor the landscape for miles in all directions and decided I was worth a gamble. He accepted a upward God knows how far. It was all part of the six-month note for most of the debt, providing a plan, and it contains a lesson-if a chance to play new supply of 24-hour periods for me to change a steam calliope can come t me, any good thing the things I can and for events to go to work. On can happen to anybody. some day, presumably, it will be clear whether the survival of our little business is a “reasonable “Give events a chance to work on your expectation” of that day. Either way, as long as side,” Walter B. had said. This is no Pollyanna we’re still on the plan, we’ll “know intuitively” happy piece; some days we get nowhere, and what to do when the time comes. when they’re over, all you can say is that you’ve Meanwhile we’re having some fine days, suffered through another day. But even that is one at a time. With only a slight editing I can an accomplishment when your passing through certify, after twelve years of testing, that the one of the valleys. Some things are healed only whole incredible promise is one come true. We by time, administered in 24-hour lots. Its mere have found a new freedom and a new passage brings one closer to that restoration happiness…Feelings of uselessness and selfthat makes it possible to begin living creatively pity…fears of people and of economic again. Thus have people been living their daily insecurity…do not overwhelm us. We intuitively stints for a million years, through an incredible know how to handle many situations which used variety of shifting circumstances. to baffle us. Our whole attitude and outlook on Failure to hold fast to this truth has cost life has changed. And changed immeasurably many a life, swept away in a fit of temporary for the better. disappointment. A neighbor of mine, a literary THE END man, worked for four years on a novel, shipped it to market, then fell into despair during the

Source: Saturday Evening Post, May 21, 1960

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