Repertoire and Regret

Rosie Pearson is my editor.* She has a wonderfully large vocabulary that I take great delight learning from. Recently she defined an ability I have as “in my repertoire,” a phrase that I thought had only to do with the theater and performances, but that I now own. While Rosie is in America and I am in India, from our beginning in 2012, we have gone beyond being editor and writer to intimate friends as well. This happened before she told me that her clients become her friends and her friends often become her clients. I knew that she had put something very important into words. Her ability is unique to preparing writing for publication because she understands the writer and with compassion, finds just the right words for those times when writing is a frustration.

It is egret season here—the name of the bird forming most of the word “regret.” From time to time I’ll feel regret—that had I long ago known what I know now, I could have been more helpful to my parents. I watch a flock of egrets cross the sky. As from spiritual training I learned that we are always doing our best, I reach for the freedom of the egret, continuing a gentle letting go of my past.

My effort in the present is to keep growing in understanding and compassion. For where I couldn’t be helpful to my parents then, I may be helpful to someone now.

My realization is, “We live with boundaries of what we know until a new way stretches us, giving us a new repertoire—one that we may be committed to keep expanding.”

* Rosie Pearson, www.entertheflow.net and www.editorrosie.net