One of the strangest English literary figures of the nineteenth century wrote:

You have come but a little way who think so far
The long uncounted leagues to the world's end.

One of the key differences between those in Program who work diligently at the last three Steps and those who -- even with long-term recovery -- prefer to work Steps 4 thru 9 over and over is this sense of how far we have come.

Many of us had double-digit recovery and -- if truth be told -- had begun to lapse into complacency about our programs. We attended meetings (in fact we regarded it as a badge of distinction-tinged humility if we still made several meetings a week); we perhaps did a little service work; we sponsored people. But there was still a sense of having "arrived." We tended to talk down our years in Program, but we were still secretly proud of them.

And then came the awakening to the real meaning of the last three Steps.

The new community in which we find ourselves as we begin to practice Steps 10, 11 and 12 seems to be quite different as far as the characteristics just described. Far from there being any sense of complacency, there is a feeling of being at the very start of things -- a feeling which seems to persist even though we can see we are making spiritual progress. In this new community, "program time" seems to count for little or nothing. In fact, those of us with many years of recovery tend to feel a little humble around people who have latched on to these Steps with only a year or so in Program. To quote another, better known poet, we collectively sense that we have

miles to go before [we] sleep.