A few years ago I was having lunch with a sponsee while he shared his Fifth Step with me. One thing he struggled with, he said, was perfectionism, a character defect—rooted in a deep sense of inferiority—that he felt his father had passed on to him.

“He could make you feel about that big,” he said, holding up his thumb and forefinger so that they nearly touched. He said that his father would stand over him while he performed some task, waiting for him to make a mistake. “If I started to do something wrong, he would say, ‘Get out of the way. You don’t know what you’re doing.’ Then he would just take over.” Listening to him describe these painful experiences with his father, I began to understand what made him tick.

As we talked, our server, who also happened to be my guitar instructor that summer, brought our food. As he was leaving the table, I said, “I’ll have that Eric Clapton solo ready when I come see you next week.” Hearing this, my sponsee looked at me and said, almost gleefully, “You’ll never sound like Eric Clapton!”

I looked at him blankly, not sure how to respond. But before I had a chance to get resentful, my mind rushed back to his description of his father’s disheartening words, his way of making him feel two inches tall. In that moment, I saw clearly that my sponsee’s comment had nothing to do with me; it had come from his own pain, his sense of not-enoughness.

Immediately, compassion for him filled the space in me where defensiveness and hurt pride might have festered. Forgiveness came to me then as a gift, born of the understanding I had gained from listening to him share his Fifth Step. These thoughts passed through my mind in a moment, and then I realized (with an inward chuckle) that my sponsee was right, even though the words he used were harsh. “You know, you’re right,” I said, smiling. “I probably won’t ever sound like Eric Clapton!”