Vachon Imagined

“I am sorry.”

Three little words that carry within them immense power and profound remorse.

They emerge from an energy many call guilt. When that guilt is sincere, you can feel it moving through the body. And in that moment, if you are paying attention, you discover something remarkable: the life within guilt is no less alive than the life within joy. No less alive than peace. No less alive than love.

There is only one life moving through us.

It takes many shapes, many directions, many interpretations, and we are invited to participate in all of them.

The person who develops wisdom and discernment learns not to reject certain experiences and cling to others. They learn how to employ life skillfully in whatever form it arrives. No matter what others think. No matter what others say. It is your life. You get to use it.

And sometimes life asks you to say, “I’m sorry.”

If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve hurt someone. Not because you are cruel, but because you are human. In the same way you have been hurt, you have also wounded others.

When guilt is met honestly rather than resisted, it becomes something useful. It becomes presence. It becomes accountability. It becomes the willingness to sit beside another person’s pain without turning away.

Then the low is no longer an enemy.

You can be with sorrow just as you can be with joy. You can be with remorse just as you can be with peace.

A body that is free is not one that only welcomes the pleasant experiences of life. A body that is free can move with all of it.

It does not hide behind walls. It does not need to secure itself in certainty or permanence.

It is the ground beneath your feet and the sky above your head.

It is open enough to contain the apology, the forgiveness, the wound, and the healing.

Everywhere life appears, it is there.