Mail Call for A.A.s at Home and Abroad

HUMILITY is a word often used by speakers, but not always understood by the newcomer to our Fellowship. To A.A. it means neither subservience, servility nor a general invitation to the world to walk over us. It is a recognition of the fact that alcohol has got us licked; that, without help from outside ourselves, we will be powerless to recover. It is the faculty of seeing ourselves as we really are and not as we have dreamed ourselves to be. It is a newborn ability to admit "I don't know", in place of pretending to knowledge that we have not got. It is a realization that it is possible to accept help, no matter from whom, without loss of dignity or independence. It is a new willingness to learn how to live. Humility, in short, to us is the art of living without our pride, but with our self-respect.