From Demigods to Humble Beings

When telling her AA story, Rena K. describes how she saw the world in her early life. It was a description that resonated with all of us. She said, “People were like cardboard cutouts that I could move around.”

We all understood it immediately. We had all seen the world as she described it. We all remembered how we played small gods, demigods. We were the directors of the play, and we had to assign everyone their position, role, and attitude. They were cardboard cutouts that we moved around.

Some of us did not need to go back to our childhood for these memories; we’d experienced these thoughts this morning.

Small wonder we found the world to be a frustrating and challenging place. The cardboard cutouts had minds of their own. They insisted on moving around without our direction or guidance, which they blithely ignored. Not only did they not care for our advice, they did not seem to have a care for our feelings. They expressed no gratitude. Some even expressed irritation.

They did not understand. Our thoughts were not malign; we had their best interests at heart. We cared for them and wanted them to be well and succeed. Often, we put their interests first; that is how unselfish we were.

If only they followed our directions, things would be better. But no, they often disagreed, and without even a thank you or how-do-you-do, they would take their own direction.

Rena had captured our sense of the world perfectly. And the clarity of her description was salutary. We could immediately see the foolishness and arrogance that was the unspoken premise of that view of the world. Obviously, the people around me were not cardboard cutouts to be moved around. They were living, breathing, sentient beings with minds of their own.

Darn! I am not the god I thought I was.