Thoughts on Regret

Taken from a traditional Vietnamese Beginning Anew ceremony:
At the foot of the mountain
there is a stream.
Take the water from the stream and wash yourself,
and you will be cured. 
From an essay by Thich Nhat Hanh called Touching the Earth

…thoughts on regret

Today I want to gather the spider webs of my life and let them cling to me as only spider webs can. My regrets, my forgotten desires, lost friendships, moments of my children’s lives when I was not attentive to their wonder, memories of people whom I loved who’ve passed away;

all these and more I want to walk unwittingly into, and feel them cover me so that I have to touch my own fingers to my skin and wipe them down over me and roll them into a fine thread. I will then spin that thread of loss of possibility into a fine silk that shimmers with the hope that’s present in this very moment. And with this graceful hope I will see my old spider webs in a new light. They will carry on them the dew of life giving waters, the glimmer of light that we each carry within us. They will be welcomed and made good use of and my aching will have grown wings and become love.

Jill MacCormack
Writing for the Creativity Project, Art in the Open 2012