The Generation Gap

There tends to be a problem in our fellowship: A generation gap.

I am a very active member of AA. Yet, I am as guilty of helping proliferate this problem as the next person. My attitudes and fears have kept me in a self-imposed jail. One where the walls are strictly Young People’s meetings taken over by young people.

As a teenager, I was constantly yelling that the older generation didn’t understand me. They were closed minded.

But I was more interested in pointing out the splinter in other people’s eyes than worrying about the board in my own. Young People’s is a special interest group. I had forgotten that. Its purpose is to help the young alcoholic realize that a person doesn’t have to drink for 30 years to become an alcoholic, acquaint us with the principles in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and help us feel a part of rather than apart from.

Yet, how can we be a part of something we don’t participate in?

Maybe it’s time to set aside our pride and resentments and participate in AA as a whole—to use our energies in positive, constructive ways, to help fellow alcoholics recover and to brighten and better the lives of those we come in contact with each and every day.

Anonymous, Reprinted from “Footsteps”