replacing guilt with joy

Well, it's official!!!

My proposal is now officially approved, and I anticipate a tuition reduction any day! After paying tuition for 10 years, I can honestly say that this is one of the most important things about finishing this degree. I feel so badly about how long this has taken, and how many "resources" I used by taking so long. I don't know - it's about "first-world" guilt - about privilege and how terrible it is to have so much of it. It's about wanting to become part of the solution!

Meanwhile, can I replace guilt with joy? What is served by my guilt? nothing good Isuspect.

How about gratitude? I keep trying to replace guilt with humble gratitude, with fire for social justice, with joy in the presence of love in my life.

A friend sent me this poem recently... I need to be reminded that for now "only once" is what we have - this moment, this day, this opportunity for joy.

Once Only

All which, because it was
flame and song and granted to us
joy, we thought we’d do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every initiation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous

did happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don’t

expect now to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body-halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.

- Denise Lervertov