Quotes - Step Four

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Chapter 4

Page 48 to 49

Page 48

hurdles, the course ahead began to look easier. For we had
started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another
way of saying that we were gaining in humility.

Of course the depressive and the power-driver are per-
sonality extremes, types with which A.A. and the whole
world abound. Often these personalities are just as sharply
defined as the examples given. But just as often some of us
will fit more or less into both classifications. Human beings
are never quite alike, so each of us, when making an inven-
tory, will need to determine what his individual character
defects are. Having found the shoes that fit, he ought to
step into them and walk with new confidence that he is at
last on the right track.

Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring
personality defects all of us have in varying degrees. To
those having religious training, such a list would set forth
serious violations of moral principles. Some others will
think of this list as defects of character. Still others will
call it an index of maladjustments. Some will become quite
annoyed if there is talk about immorality, let alone sin.
But all who are in the least reasonable will agree upon one
point: that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about
which plenty will have to be done if we are to expect sobri-
ety, progress, and any real ability to cope with life.

To avoid falling into confusion over the names these de-
fects should be called, let's take a universally recognized list
of major human failings—the Seven Deadly Sins of pride,
greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. It is not by
accident that pride heads the procession. For pride, lead-
ing to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious

Page 49

or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human
difficulties, the chief block to true progress. Pride lures
us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others
which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our
God-given instincts. When the satisfaction of our instincts
for sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our
lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses.

All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own
right. Then fear, in turn, generates more character defects.
Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied
drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex
and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands
are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others
seem to be realized while ours are not. We eat, drink, and
grab for more of everything than we need, fearing we shall
never have enough. And with genuine alarm at the pros-
pect of work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate, or
at best work grudgingly and under half steam. These fears
are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of
whatever sort of life we try to build.

So when A.A. suggests a fearless moral inventory, it
must seem to every newcomer that more is being asked of
him than he can do. Both his pride and his fear beat him
back every time he tries to look within himself. Pride says,
"You need not pass this way," and Fear says, "You dare not
look!" But the testimony of A.A.'s who have really tried
a moral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn
out to be bogeymen, nothing else. Once we have a com-
plete willingness to take inventory, and exert ourselves to
do the job thoroughly, a wonderful light falls upon this