"Seize the day," says the Latin proverb -- carpe diem. This is one of the first lessons we learn when we come into Program. A day at a time -- that's all we need be concerned with. If we don't drink today, if we don't place that bet, if we don't take on another debt, if we don't eat what we shouldn't, then we will be OK.

It's funny how many things we learn when we first enter recovery that we tend to forget as we progress. After a while, we don't seem to need the "day at a time" business any more. We seem to be able to manage without it. We start to get clever again. We can handle our lives in much larger pieces now that we're not at the mercy of our addiction. We're in control; we don't take things so much to heart any more; we can manage the complexities of our lives in a way we never could when we were active in our addiction.

After some years we can take our seats among the old-timers in meetings and keep telling the newcomer that everything will be all right if only she doesn't practice her addiction and if she keeps coming to meetings. Sometimes the newcomer must wonder why we old-timers keep saying this same thing over and over again. The reason, of course, is that it actually isn't true. Everything won't be all right if we just keep coming to meetings, because we're tempted as a result to think that we can handle our lives over periods of weeks, months, or years.

The salutary lesson of Step 10 is that life simply can't be handled in these large units of time. Indeed, even a day at a time may be too much to expect. Step 10, in the version that appears in the AA Big Book, implies that it must be handled a moment at a time. If a moment passes without our active awareness of what we are doing, thinking, and feeling, then probably we're back in the driver's seat and heading for yet another self-created problem. Perhaps our motto should be carpe momentum -- seize the moment -- for it's only in this moment, here and now, that we really encounter ourselves.