Reflections of the Past Week

 Getting to where we need to go often means 

 finding a new language for where we’ve already been.

    —- Belden C. Lane  Backpacking With the Saints

it’s not like forgetting or painting everything over with new paint nor placing a shroud over those parts best left alone nor is it ignoring past footfalls or walking away and not looking over your shoulder but it means a fresh lexicon created out of a acceptance of cracks, fissures, erasures, broken places, and knowing that some plans were scrapped and others never reached beyond might have been

it’s recognizing that might have been doesn’t have footprints and behind you can see many prints, some deep and some shallow—tentative like the time you thought a graduate degree in ancient history sounded perfect and then the idea of learning ancient languages just froze the idea into a mirage

keep walking because right ahead is a new landscape which simply asks you for a new set of words to tell your story without frills or apologies or omissions so that you enter this wild terrain and embrace the edges and center with abandonment

but the price of entering is looking into the mirror and hearing your story without buts and ifs and knowing that we all need to place the past at the gate, rectify what needs rectifying and then move on