October 18
A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world: Everyone you meet is your mirror.
-Ken Keyes, Jr.
It’s easy to get lost in a forest of labels as it is in a forest of trees. Adult Children, co-dependents, recovering addicts by the hundreds of thousands seem to be moving in the same direction-but they’re all marching under different banners! Figuring it all out can be very confusing. Do the differences really matter that much?
It’s good to remember that all people who are striving to improve their lives are on fundamentally the same journey. By any name, the core effort of all these groups is the same: to embrace life from a positive self-definition. Because we view the world much as we view ourselves, the common task of all self-help groups is to help us grow out of the negative self-definitions that create negative results in our lives.
Those who have learned to define themselves as losers will lose. Those who define themselves as unlovable will not allow themselves to be loved. People who see themselves as victims will be at high risk for the abandonment they most fear. The goal of all groups is to support positive redefinition. No matter what our starting point, we are all on the same path. Growth is not a dozen journeys-it is one journey with a dozen names.
Labels point out differences that fellowship doesn’t notice.
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