The 12 Step Aside Program - Step Two

by Step Aside Butch

STEP TWO

Smile, even if you're worthless

Hi there, and welcome again. Tonight we will concentrate first on smiling. Step two will shove us down the crooked road of prideless squandering of our self-worth. Tonight we will smile and people will notice. We will smile so bright and wide that a very strange thing may happen, people may like you. No, don't get nervous, because without the rest of my 12 Steps beneath you, you will inevitably fall. Do not try to interact with these people just yet.

Smiling is a simple method of hiding your true feelings. And since no one wants to see your true feelings, they should indeed be hidden. You will notice all around you, people smiling. They seem happy. They seem content. Now you will also notice people not smiling. Don't they make you angry? We are going to let out a little of that pent up rage and disgust from Step One and use it against those people. But, don't forget that you're not yet a better person, this being only Step Two, so throw in a little stab at yourself. Repeat after me; "I hate people that don't smile, and I hate myself for hating them." Repeat this to yourself over and over and eventually you will begin to see a smile cutting its way into your own face. Eventually you will see no need to express grief or hurt, to express sorrow, or bitterness. Some day you will feel your life falling skyward as if gravity has left the earth, your hands will smolder with the heat of the sun's oceans of fury and your eyes blinded by a vengeful Christ and his perfect heartless shadow, your screams swallowed in a void of endless souls ranked and filed and tagged for judgment before the eternal throne of an Earth-walking unGod come at last to set order to the chaos of human sin. And then you will feel the shallow hope of escape parallel to a fear engineered for thousands of years. You will tear out your own soul and escape it running to the edge of the abyss where your flesh and mind reels without inborn wisdom from the generations before you, and you would sell your hope for a second of memory. This is where despair is complete. Your utter end. Then you smile.

We can learn a lot from that crazy character Mr Smiles. He's the happy dancing cowboy spitting his cares away with a wad of dip and tips his hat up at the wild blue yonder. He is an American hero whose race is changed on a statue. But he's still smilin'. He put the fun in funeral, the "i" in team, and the flowery fucking pleats in toilet paper. We can learn alot from him. Repeat; "I will find the 'path' in 'pathetic'."

Now I want everyone to simply smile. First think of the worst thing thats ever happened to you. Then smile like it doesn't matter. Even if your worthless, a smile will help to get you by in this world. If you keep going around with that expression of self-reflection and individualness and independent thought, of contemplation and awareness, then theres little hope for you. Even without hope, even when all is falling apart or fallen, don't forget to smile.