Hi everyone, my name is Aaron. I am an alcoholic. I will tell you, between uh last night and about 45 seconds ago, everything that was in my head has gone off the rails. Last night I I had everything done. I was asleep. I woke up at like two to go to the restroom. As soon as I laid back down, I heard my dad's voice in my head saying, uh, throw away what you wrote because you're just gonna end up reading it directly off there. And so because I listened to him, I did. And then just now, nervous as heck, trying to get my phone out of my pocket, found that that was from a ballet that my daughter did in the spring, in which I had to, I and the other fathers got to dance with our daughters. Um, do a waltz, so I have a little piece of my daughter here that I didn't know was gonna be here. Um step four made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Um oh, excuse me, I forgot something here. Resentment. Jeff cause asking me to speak at Fatima affects my self-esteem, possible embarrassment. I'm kidding, of course. It is a very big honor. Um I will start with a quick story. The first time I was at Fairbanks, and yes, I said first time, because if you're so good at it once, they'll let you come back almost a year later and do the whole program again. And the first time I was there, they had a gentleman that came in and spoke, and he uh when he was speaking with us, uh he spoke very highly of AAA, and when he got done speaking, he asked us all to sit down with a piece of paper and do a pseudo-fourth step. And I refused. And he asked uh why I wasn't doing it, and I said, Well, this has nothing to do with anything. My problem, I just drink too much, and he basically said, Yeah, well, good luck with that. And uh hence the reason I got to go back a year later. Um it says right in the four step or in the in the chapter that our liquor was but a symptom. I think that is where my failing was. I thought that the drinking was the problem, and I know a lot of people out here think that drinking is their problem. Uh, for those of you that haven't done a four-step or have done it and are about to do a fifth step. Drinking is not your problem. You are your problem, I was my problem. Uh if you look at the steps, it only says the word alcohol in one step at all. And that's the very first step. Uh, when we get to four, uh we are working on the things inside of us that are hurting our soul. Line I stole from Aeneas because I like it. The things that hurt our soul. Um it's also the step that I think more time has been spent working on than any other step. And uh I was trying to think, you know, why is that? Whatever, whatever. And it comes down to just a couple of things. We're too prideful, prideful, arrogant, and fearful. Uh, we're too reluctant to release the resentments we hold inside of us. We refuse to see that whatever someone did to us has no relation to how we treated them in the grand scheme of things. We might think there is, but there's not. And the only way to progress is that we need to relieve ourselves of that, right? That's what we do. From the big book, it says it is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile? Effectively, these are the things that hurt our soul, and these are the things that keep us stuck in the mud of our past. We all have faith, and we think we all have courage. We do, we just don't show it. The only way to do this step correctly is to do it fearlessly. I can honestly say for myself that when I was working on it, um that I initially at uh Fairbanks, I didn't do it. So I didn't do it, uh I didn't do it fearlessly, and I didn't do it thoroughly. Then when I did my second one with an actual sponsor, uh I did not do it fearlessly. I was searching, but not fearless because of the one thing that even though I knew was there, I refuse to write down. Some of you are going to be doing a fifth step, possibly for the first time today. Um I encourage you to be fearless in this step. Do not leave things out. Leaving things out will lead you to go back out again, which is what it did for me. The last time I did a four-step, I finally did it very searchingly. I'm not even sure that's a word. And I did it fearlessly. Now, not entirely fearlessly, because the one thing that I had that I wasn't gonna tell anyone, I actually wrote on a separate piece of paper and put it on the bottom of the pile just in case uh we we didn't get around to it. And all I could think of is when when my sponsor asked if there was anything else, and I knew that paper was down there, that there was something else. And I pulled it out and we went over it, and like many of you have had this same situation happen to you. He didn't look at me funny, he didn't go, Oh, what's wrong with you? He didn't do any of those things. He nodded, shared a story, shook my hand, he gave me a hug and told me that he loved me, and we went on from there. I'd love to say when we got through that, when I got through my fourth and subsequently my fifth, that everything was immediately better and a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. And for some of you, you may have that. You may get that, and and I truly envy you that. I didn't have a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders. What I did have was the feeling that for the first time, probably in my whole life, I had done something without fear. Fear did not control me, fear did not control what I did or what I thought or what I believed was owed to me. Fear was completely gone for the first time in my life, and I knew if I could do that, I could do everything else that was suggested of me in the big book. So please, I implore you, if you're doing your fifth step today, look at your four step, make sure you're not leaving things off, be extraordinarily fearless with it, be honest, be searching, and things will work out for the best for you. Um I do this earlier this week, I did text several people that I know and ask them individually if they could give me just one line that they think is the most important or the thing that they took away from the four step. Um, what would it be? Um I will just share some of these with you. If I didn't share yours, I'm sorry. I just didn't have that much time. Um I was finally going to be serious about sobriety and was going to do it somebody else's way. Uh one gentleman, the most important task I have ever completed. Set a date to do the fifth step and start writing the fourth. Four step was where I realized my inability to form true relationships with others. Realize that I could change my life and didn't always have to play the victim. Uh be open-minded and prepare for discovery. And it doesn't have to be perfect. I do want to share one last thing because it wouldn't be like me if I didn't. Um I always search for things in my everyday life or in things that I've learned or in things that I've read so that I can correlate the 12 steps. Uh makes more sense to me that way. And I have no idea if any of you uh have ever read the book, The Old Man in the Sea, but it is one of my favorite books. And if you don't know, I'll give you a brief synopsis. There's a very old Cuban fisherman. He hasn't caught a fish in 84 days. He has a helper, but the parents won't let the helper go out with him anymore because he hasn't caught a fish in 84 days and they consider him unlucky. And so the fisherman decides that he's got to catch a fish. And he goes out and he goes, I know that there's fish out farther. I know that there's fish out farther. And he catches the biggest fish he's ever caught in his life. He can't get it in the boat, so he ties it to the side. And as he's sailing back, sharks pick the entire thing apart to the point where there's only a tail and a head when he gets home. Lost the entire thing. He could curse the sharks, he could scream at them, he could be angry at the world and angry at God for uh for what was taken from him. He says, I shouldn't have gone out so far, fish, neither for you nor for me. He took responsibility and cleaned up his side of the street for going out too far. It wasn't his business to tell the shark what it had done wrong. It just were he just worried about him and what he had brought to the table. Um so be fearless like Santiago. Look for your part in it. And uh like I said before, be as fearless as you possibly can. My name is Aaron I am an alcoholic.