A close-up: A boat sailing along. Someone comes up to the top man on board and asks him a question. "Don't bother me now," says the top man. "I'm busy steering."

The camera zooms away, above the boat. But now we see that it's no longer a boat -- it's a log that has broken away from the shore and is being carried rapidly downstream towards the waterfall. The crew are not men and women, but ants. The "top man" is the ant at the front of the log; and because he's at the front, he thinks he's steering. And so do the rest of the ants.

The temptation to think that there is someone in charge, someone who knows what they're doing, is strong in all of us. Those of us that are neurotic tend to think and hope that there's someone else doing the steering, who will tell us what to do. Those of us that are character-disordered think we're in charge and doing all the steering. Meanwhile the "boat" is heading heaven knows where.

Every year, the business journals offer a list of stockbrokers who have "beaten the market." A very small number of brokers do so year after year. Naturally, we think those brokers have some special insight. In point of fact, there are so many thousands of brokers that statistically a very small number will have that sort of success -- they just happen to sit at the very end of the average curve of distribution. Probability theory says that this must happen. They're not good brokers -- they're just very, very lucky.

Our daily practice of Steps 10, 11 and 12 shows us that there are no heroes, no experts, and no winners on the "road of happy destiny." There is no particular reason why certain things happen or do not happen to us. Statistically, most of us will find ourselves at the front of the log at one time or another. Let's hope we don't succumb to the temptation of thinking that that means we have the foggiest notion of what we're doing.