The play Peter Pan appeared in 1904, and its author J.M. Barrie published a version of it as a novel Peter and Wendy in 1911. Walt Disney has made the story famous, of course, though the Disney cartoon and most dramatizations omit a coda that Barrie wrote to the play. In this addition, Peter returns to take Wendy to Never Never Land, only to find that Wendy has grown up and has children of her own -- a discovery that reduces Peter to tears.

The play offers us three very different alternatives to living our lives. As addicts, we've tried -- and failed -- to live in the world that Peter Pan wants to inhabit. We've done all we can to stay in Never Never Land, where we are in total control and where we triumph over the forces of interfering grown-ups and do just as we please. We've tried it, and it has reduced us to tears just as it did Peter when he returned for Wendy and found she was no longer there for him.

Some of us begin to work at our programs, and after a number of years we're pretty sure we've got this whole business figured out. But there seems so often to be an underlying low-grade anxiety running as a thread through our lives. More than one critic has suggested we're like Captain Hook. Most of the time life seems to go our way, but every so often we hear the tick-tick-tick of the clock inside that wretched crocodile. Time's ticking away and somehow or another we still haven't managed to win. Like Hook, we're still living in Never Never Land: we'll never get what we want.

And finally there is Wendy. As a child she is content to fly with Peter to Never Never Land and mother everyone including the Lost Boys. But as the years go by Wendy really does grow up. When Peter Pan last glimpses her, she's living in the here-and-now -- the world as it actually is -- and she can no longer even see Peter.

Here-and-now: the basis of the last three Steps. Whenever we slip away from them, we're lost again in yesterday and tomorrow, in Never Never Land. Growing up in Program doesn't mean we have to give up the fantasies that can entertain and amuse us, as long as we don't try any more to live in them.