Newsletter, the ‘Daily Reprieve’.

I hope you all are enjoying another season of recovery (the only kind we have in Singapore!) When I first read that Step Six was the one which “separated the men from the boys,” I was confused. To me, in my first year of recovery, this seemed like the good part of the Twelve steps! Every newcomer looks with worry at the big points “FOUR” and “NINE” on the wall, a certain queasy feeling in her stomach. But who doesn’t want to get rid of all her character defects, and become a better person? When the Twelve and Twelve talked about us clinging to these defects I was genuinely baffled—all the more so when they put it in the context of the Seven Deadly Sins. I don’t really think anyone wants to be prideful, or angry. Or, at least, I didn’t think so.

I was breezing along. And, indeed, I made a lot of progress working my steps for the first time, and was a much happier person at the end of that first year. Then it turned out I had to do it all over again. I was less dismayed than I might have been. I had seen the good results, and surely I hadn’t gotten into nearly as much trouble in the last year as I had in the preceding 35. It was going to be a cake­ walk. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that, as much as I had tried, I had not dug deep

enough in my first Step Four, and there was a lot more work to be done. More surprisingly to me, I hadn’t been right about what character defects I had, or which were the most glaring.

Astonishingly, when I was honest and reflective, I realized it was true: I didn’t want to give up some of these defects. Or at least not all the way… Was I going to

swear off smugness and superiority for good, even when I was totally in the right? Was I going to stop gently nudging people to behave the way I knew was best for