Taking Inventory Mid-Season 5-27-10

Deep Gap, North Carolina

Management at well-run businesses knows the necessity of taking inventory at year end, not so much to avoid tax consequences as to know if the right amounts of key ingredients to conduct business the following year are in place. Old Testament writings speak of the utter folly of those who start grandiose building projects without first taking inventory to see if the needed materials and finance are on hand. In the 1930s a compelling observation on the value of doing an inventory stated:

A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and fact-facing process. It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock-in-trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods, to get rid of them promptly and without regret. If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values.

As important as this might be in business, even more important is taking inventory in our personal lives. In a culture of projected images and perceptions, an honest look inward can be a profoundly painful and discomfiting process. In the twelve-step recovery world, the first ‘action’ step is described as making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. This fourth step is often viewed as the most daunting of the twelve, and many would-be paths to recovery are stymied by refusal to fully embrace this necessary look inward. For those who have successfully recovered from addictions, delusion, and ego-centric living, they did as any well-run business would do. We did exactly the same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly. First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure. Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.

If we really want to live life differently and achieve better results, self-honesty is essential. Such honesty can be profoundly painful in a world where addictive options enable us to flee our spiritual and affective pain, even if but for a season. In recovery, one has the vast luxury of being able to face this pain and pass through it in a safe environment with others who have successfully done the same thing. The liberation from emotional and spiritual torment many report finding at the conclusion of this fourth step inventory is a source of great hope for those still struggling with powerful dimensions of denial.

I was recently told of a woman who moved cross country, selling her house in the far west at a large loss, buying acreage here in remote Appalachia, putting up a barn for her three Arabian horses, and starting on a new house. The builder quit work on the house, leaving it exposed to the elements, when she ran out of money. She has a barn full of expensive horses and a partially-built house that is uninhabitable. The worst winter in memory found her chattering for months inside a tiny travel camper in four feet of snow.

The merits of two kinds of inventory come to mind, ones that could have saved our would-be horse rancher from frostbite and near homelessness. Certainly an inventory to count costs would have spared her from failed projects. Costs of selling a house, moving animals cross country, maintaining expensive horses, buying land, erecting outbuildings, and putting up a house are easily calculated. If one does not have enough resources to do all these projects, would it not then make sense to prioritize them, perhaps change ones plans; to look inward and look at one’s motivations? Does one really want to sleep in a tiny camper while the horses have a heated tack room? As it is, she has a house at risk for going to ruin if weather continues harsh and finances equally so. As best I can surmise, she has few viable options she’s willing to consider at this point. Selling horses and shifting resources to the completion of the house is not acceptable I am told. Letting her house go to ruin and suffering additional losses to maintain horses, for but a season, makes little sense to me.

The only way it could make sense to her to do something different is if she has done the life inventories all of us need to be doing with some regularity. What do I really want to be doing with my life? What will enable me to be of maximum service and helpfulness to my fellows? Where do I want to be in five years? Twenty years? If one does not want to be an old woman living alone, shivering in a horseless barn burning the ruins of an unfinished house ten years from now to stay warm, perhaps a searching and fearless moral inventory to determine what drives such financially self-destructive behavior is in order.

For certain, we can just as convincingly feed our addictions at the mall, sale barn, or car lot as we can from the drug dealer on the corner. When places, people, or things drive us to self destructive behaviors, the word ‘addiction’ is apt. Certainly those who jeopardize the security and serenity of their families buying new cars, too much house, new furniture, new clothes, even animals, ad infinitum are no different than someone who sleeps outside while the horses sleep inside, or buys eight balls in the dark.

Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for important places in society often tyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man’s natural desires cause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is. No human being, however good, is exempt from these troubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens, our greatest natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities. A personal inventory is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are ... Without a searching and fearless moral inventory, most of us have found that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach. Many of us have moved towards a working faith we never would have found any other way.

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.