From the late Middle Ages comes the tale of Everyman. This morality play about the life and death of an ordinary, pleasure-seeking man has probably been performed continuously somewhere in the world for five or more centuries, and has been adapted into more modern versions (e.g. Jedermann, by Hugo von Hoffmansthal).

Like us, Everyman lives a life that is not exactly good, but not terribly wicked either. He gives little thought to how that life will end until Death pays him a call and warns him that an accounting of his life will soon be required of him. As Everyman seeks for companions to join him in death, his friends, his possessions, even his character assets slip away from him one by one, and he says:

Me thinks, alas, that I must be gone
To make my reckoning and my debts pay,
For I see my time is nigh spent away.
Take example, all ye that this do hear or see,
How they that I loved best do forsake me,
Except my Good Deeds that bideth truly.

And his Good Deeds reply:

All earthly things are but vanity:
Beauty, Strength and Discretion do man forsake,
Foolish friends and kinsmen that fair spake,
All fleeth save Good Deeds ....

All that Everyman can take for that final accounting is his good deeds. He is like us in our practice of Steps 10, 11 and 12: the only thing that counts is, not what we think, feel, or believe, but what we do.