Sean's Picks

Quirks, Faults, and Foibles

Just like you, your friends are trying to figure out who they are and what the purpose of life is. They change their minds, have ups and downs, and make mistakes. Sometimes they even talk behind your back without really meaning any harm. Or they get a little jealous. Although you shouldn’t hang with friends who are regularly mean or act like jerks all the time, you should be tolerant of your friends’ everyday weaknesses and not overreact to the little mistakes they make.

Forgive their little quirks, faults, foibles, and inconsistencies just as you hope they forgive yours.

Kevin shared this story:

One day before baseball practice, I set my drink down on the bleachers and went to the bathroom. When I got back, I took a big drink of my soda. Everyone started laughing hysterically. I found out that someone had spit in my drink. But instead of blowing up in front of everyone, I pushed the “pause” button in my mind. I had just read the 7 Habits and so I rehearsed in my mind making proactive vs. reactive decisions.

After some time passed, I went up to the guy who spit in my drink and asked, “Why did you do that?” We talked it out, he apologized, and I forgave him because he was my friend. I went home that night feeling good about myself because I made the decision of talking it out, and I maintained our friendship. I realized sometimes with friends there are normal ups and downs, and the best thing to do is not to overreact, but to forgive and forget.

Kevin followed the proverb that says:

Right after I started drinking and drugging, I noticed some physical problems, too. I felt real tired all the time. I also lost a lot of weight, about thirty pounds in two months.

The other thing was that I would go home and run out of toothpaste or something like that, and I’d cry. I was overreacting big time. My temper was really short.

About a month after my seventeenth birthday, I got caught with drugs in school. They suspended me for a week, and I knew that was the time I needed to get myself back together. So I tried to stop, but I couldn’t. It’s like when you smoke cigarettes. You can put one down and say you’re going to quit, you’re going to quit, but it is real hard to stop.

So I stopped hanging around my old friends and started going to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings and I got a sponsor. AA is a lifelong thing. You take one drink and it messes up everything you had built up to that point. A lot of my friends who came to AA have relapsed. But my sponsor really helped me out. Without this program, I know I wouldn’t have stopped.

Since I’ve been in this program, it’s been the greatest life. I don’t drink. I don’t drug. My schoolwork is going back up. My family is closer than ever now. Before, I worked at almost every fast-food place there is in town because I’d quit within two weeks at each one. Now, I’ve had just one job for about two months. I came back to school and I started to care. I was nice to people even when they weren’t nice to me. I’ve totally changed my life around. I’m starting to think about college and doing all these things I would never think of before. It’s real confusing to me why anyone would spend their high school years drinking. It’s a scary life.