Progress, not perfection

Yesterday my attendance was lacking at a meeting that I had committed to attending. I am sure they got along fine without me. In the past, any sort of letdown would be the lead-in to a series of cascading failures on my part resulting in chaos. My outlook and life has changed so that is no longer the case today.

Tonight I had promised a friend a ride to visit her friend in jail at the King County Regional Justice Center (RJC) in Kent. We left Bellevue when she got off work at 6:30, had no traffic problems on the drive to Kent, had dinner at an incredibly delicious inexpensive Mexican restaurant that was one-step more permanent than a taco-truck and then went to the RJC. I waited in the car while my friend visited her friend.

I finished reading Gratitude Factor, The: Enhancing Your Life through Grateful Living while waiting in my car at the RJC parking lot. It was a good place to think about being grateful. I watched friends and family walk into the RJC to visit loved ones in jail. I was glad that: A) I am not in jail nor an any imminent danger of being arrested; B) none of my family nor friends are in jail.

My friend had been to the RJC before as an inmate. This was her first trip as a visitor. She assured me it was a lot better to visit the jail than to stay there. Her visit made her more grateful for the progress she has made in her recovery in the last 2+ years from when she was the one being visited by her friend while she was in the RJC.

I am grateful that I can now help others, I can recover from minor setbacks before they snowball out of control, I am not in jail and that my friends are all on a mostly upward trajectory with their lives. We are all winners now. It did not use to be that way. That is literally miraculous progress.