Life requires a certain amount of field work that catches us up in the time the culture is operating on. Usually the field work is not done until you have gotten to mid-life and come to terms with the unlived lives of your parents that you tried to live or flee from. Or, when you have wrestled with addictions to substances or processes and by some grace ended up on the side of life. After the field work of life, there is time to come inside or sit in the rocker on the porch. You are not afraid to be alone, to listen for and to answer the questions that there was never time enough before to hear.
Time is necessary for the sharp windy taste of freedom and warm piquancy of joy.
The recovery movement has grown out of the desolation of alcoholism and other drug addictions. For those for whom time has broken down, who have been broken apart by the phenomenon of craving, there has been one approach developed by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous that has proven itself to work. This approach, grounded in universal principles of spirituality, provides tools to slow down the experience of time, to confront and discard the fears of the past. For those who use the tools of the AA program to guide their life, first things are handled first, time becomes more manageable. Yet AA never suggests inflexible solutions, creativity has time to blossom.