Cynicism

Before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, one thing upon which I most prided myself was my cynicism. I believed I could see through your motives without even trying, and that everyone was, like me, out for their own personal gain. For every example to the contrary I had a quick response: for the mother who sacrificed her own life to save her child, I would say, "Yes, because she didn't want to be thought of as a lousy mother who let her child die", and for those who gave of their time and energy because of their religious beliefs, "A purely selfish desire for salvation. If they didn't believe there was a heaven and a God who could send them there or elsewhere, they wouldn't lift a finger."

Now, the most interesting thing to me about my former cynicism is that I always thought of myself as being intellectually rigorous and entirely honest. It was those who fooled themselves into believing that they actually had some sort of selflessness who were being dishonest and mushy in their thinking. I have come to understand that--at least for me--cynicism may be the most blatant form of intellectual dishonesty there is. To assert that my conclusions on the world are entirely correct while being entirely unwilling to examine all of the available evidence which might refute them is the height of ignorance and is guaranteed to keep me ignorant.

Nor were my motives at all pure; while I may have seemed to myself to be courageous in my upright stand against what I saw as hypocrisy, I was really acting out of fear. I was constantly afraid of the uncertainty in the world, and needed this artificial certainty to feel safe. Indeed, if I had been certain of my opinions, I would have had no need to defend them so vociferously against those who challenged them. Which is not to say that I have been cured of my fear of uncertainty, but that the tools I have been given through AA and my study of the dharma allow me to recognize my fear for what it is and work toward coming to accept it as a part of my life. When our monsters become our familiars, they cease to have the power over us they once had.

A wonderful book to look at concerning this topic of the fear of uncertainty and how it rules our lives is Pema Chodron's Comfortable With Uncertainty.

May you all be well and at peace.