Home Steps Presently Unchained

Presently Unchained

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The OA program encourages us to live one day at a time. In other words, that says to me, “Live in today.”

I heard a cute story about a man who was dragging a chain behind him on the sidewalk. Another man asked him, “Why are you dragging that chain?” To which he replied, “Have you ever tried pushing one of these things?”

How does this relate to “living in today?” If I had not learned how to let go of the past through Step work in OA, I would not know how to lay down the chains of my own past. The first edition of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous mentions on page 83 that the first nine Steps are “primarily intended to help us clear up the accumulated debris of the past” (emphasis mine). The new Twelve and Twelve, Second Edition says that once we have “made a beginning on an entirely new way of life . . . Step Ten calls for daily repetition of the actions we took in the first nine Steps” (pp. 69–70). If, after completing Steps One through Nine, I do not take the Tenth Step personal inventory each day, and admit and correct my wrongs, I will drag the chains of past issues with me into each new day. If I continue to avoid inventory and corrective actions, those chains will get longer and heavier each day as I drag hurts, resentments, and anger from the past into today.

Similarly, if I try to live in the what-ifs of the future, not staying in today, I will be trying to push the chain. It seems to me that pushing a chain is impossible, just as worrying about my future will not have much effect on what actually happens in the future. Looking back on my life, I find that most of the things I contemplated, worried about, or anticipated for the future never happened (which for the most part I can say, “thank God”).

If I am not agonizing over the past or anticipating the future, I have so much more physical, mental, and emotional energy to really live in today, one day at a time.

— Anonymous

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