Those of us living in one day at a time recovery learn to understand we receive gifts. We start to understand that all human beings are imperfect. We start to understand that there are flaws in our lives and in our recovery. Human imperfection becomes a gift. We start to accept this as we become older. It’s not just a whimsical discovery like “Oh well. Life happens!” Human imperfection helps us to realize the human condition causes much harm to people. We see ourselves not only as victims, but also as perpetrators. Many of us who live in one day at a time recovery sadly own up to this. Sometimes the idea of being happy, joyous, and free pisses us off because we know the demons of shame, guilt, and remorse. We see people die by suicide because of this. If only we could have told them this is human imperfection. And we wanted them to understand human imperfection is why we were and why we still can get messed up. We get through hard time not because it was a natural stage of growth but because we had no other choice. And should we be ones who were lucky enough to have made this choice we can tell you both us and life are imperfect. We learned to reach out and as we reached out it taught us two things. Empathy and reality. What might be difficult to understand is many people need discover this themselves. We also see the good in life even though we accept human imperfection. Human imperfection has led us to recovery. One day at a time living has taught us we are people and we pay it forward with empathy and reality. Life is worth it.
