For an alcoholic, a “to do” list provides the perfect “hide-behind” excuse to drink. We’d say, “You’d drink too if you had the to do list I do.”  

I understand the importance of a continual contact with the Program. After over 50 years of the practice of law and 13 years of retirement and now living in an assisted living facility, I’ve discovered my “to-do habit” has found a new way to sometimes disrupt my serenity but, thanks to the Program, not my sobriety.

At 85, those “do lists” might seem to be merely a nightmare. Sometimes those dreams emit a flavor of authenticity and I get up, hit my computer, pound out a few notes but soon discover a new level of lunacy, sheepishly crawling back to bed, mumbling to the cat that I don’t even have a to do list.

Mr. ToDo appeared once again last week. This time, I took the trouble to ask “why” this was happening—why after 13 years of retirement has he reappeared? I asked but frankly feared his answer would be a snippety, “Well what do you want the answer to be?” Silence. Then I redoubled my search for any possible good. And I think I found it.

Mr. ToDo is here to remind me to keep in touch with my Higher Power as I walk life’s varied paths. He also reminds me that I must stay in touch with the Program, to work the Steps, to carry the message.

Morn comes in due course, we recall those night-time tensions of anxiety, that old invitation to reach for our addiction and instead we recall the pains it brought to ourselves and others. Oh, what a friend we have in the Program—if we but reach out, away from our selfish “human-beingness.”

So, a “To Do List.” A bane? Sure, if we let our addictive orientations of the past re-enter our lives. “To Do,” is this list really a aid? I think so. It’s our Higher Power’s way of calling us to the Program and its serenity.

Indeed, the words of that old hymn come to the fore, “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear, what a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer.”

–Jim A/St X Noon, written at 5:45 A.M, after discussion with Mr. Todo.