Pathmaker

Musings on Regret and Remaking the Path

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Pathmaker, there is no path.
We make the path by walking.
By walking, we make the path.

Caminante, no hay camino....
Se hace camino al andar.

— Antonio Machado, from “Traveler, your footprints”
(English translation: David Whyte)

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When I graduated from college at the ripe old age of 26, my parents generously gifted me enough money to tour Italy by myself. Airfare. Accommodations. Food. Spending cash. All I had to do was secure hotels, pack my bags, and step on a plane. Italy was my dream — it always had been — and my parents wanted me to have it. They removed all the obstacles and gave me everything I needed to go.

And you know what I did with the money?

Nothing.

I put it away. Saved it.

And I still haven’t been to Italy.

I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more I find myself daydreaming about all the things I wish I’d done in my teens and 20s. Taken more risks, taken that flight, said yes, said no, gone dancing, stepped on that stage, told him how I felt. I wish I hadn’t measured out my life in coffee spoons, and such little coffee spoons at that.

Fast forward twenty years. Not to get too morbid here, friends, but I’ve probably crossed life’s halfway mark. I don’t feel like I have. I don’t think I look like I have. But I can’t deny it — I’ve probably lived more life than I have left. As that reality has set in over the past several years, I’ve begun taking more risks. Not major risks like jumping out of planes or going on African safaris, but little things that I haven’t given myself permission to do before. Like imbibing in K-Pop, going salsa dancing with my adventurous friend, telling hard truths to my closest people.

I didn’t realize it at first, but I’ve been asking myself a question when these little risks present themselves:

Will I regret doing this thing? Or will I regret not doing it?

Sometimes a quick analysis reveals that the cost outweighs the benefits. Sometimes it just makes more sense to stay the course and let the opportunity fade in the overgrowth of the path not taken. But sometimes the pang I feel at the thought of letting it go leads me to take another step toward it. And another step. And another. A kind of “go until you get a no” mentality.

And that’s where the path has brought me today, friends. If you’ve been around The Mending Space for a while, you may remember that in 2021, I started graduate school to obtain my master’s degree in clinical psychology. You might also vaguely remember that after a few terms, I had to withdraw for health reasons. But what you wouldn’t know is how painful it was for me to withdraw. How much it broke my heart. How much I haven’t been able to shake the loss. Not just because it bruised my ego (which it definitely did), but because I know this is my vocation — the place where my “deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

For several years, I resigned that I may never get back to this deep gladness. But a few months ago, a particularly painful life season woke me up. When I came to the other side, not only was I just grateful to be alive, I was also done playing small and done being afraid. With that fresh vista before my eyes, the most liberating thought occurred to me. In a hundred years, everyone I know, including me, is going to be dead. Why would I let doubt or what people think or money or minor hurdles or past mistakes and blunders stop me?

So I assessed my life — my family responsibilities, my health, and (gulp!) my finances. It was a messy picture. There is nothing particularly easy or breezy about my life that would make you say, “Oh wow, Krista, now is a perfect time for you to go back to Pepperdine and spend six figures and the next three years getting your clinical psychology degree.” Cooler heads might say, “Why don’t you just wait until — ” And they might be right. Ish. But there is more than one right path.

If I’ve learned anything, anything, over the past twenty, thirty, or 46 years, it’s that there is no perfect time. There is no perfect path. There is grace. There are student loans. There are private loans. There is a little house south of Nashville where the three most beautiful people I know are tangibly supporting me and committing to this dream with me. And there is the moxie of this Deep True Self that I have carried within me from the jump.

I see her.

I feel her.

Tenacious and indefatigable.

The first one in, the last one out.

She has never once led me astray.

And she has never been more ready to shine.

I have never been more ready to shine.

These are hard days, friends. Millions of us in America are in grief and shock at the cruelty of our current government administration and how unrecognizable our country looks today. Many here and around the world are already suffering greatly and needlessly because of this administration; millions more will lose much as new legislation passes and is enacted. We, all of us, also grieve and object to the continuing wars and grotesque war crimes in Ukraine and Gaza, and the civil wars and recycled violence that mark every continent. So much is out of our hands. And we are burdened by the age of anxiety and brutality in which we live. Once we have educated ourselves, prayed for the suffering, contacted legislators, and given what we have where we can, the only thing left to do is live our one wild and precious life as authentically and honestly as possible.

This is no easy task, of course. Don’t let anyone tell you it is. Life is hard in the best of times. Life is short, too. This leads some to nihilistically say, “Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless.” (Been there, done that.) And sometimes the paths we choose — even the good ones, the best ones — add to the complexity and strain. We are mad for doing this, mad for trying, mad for caring, but a bit of madness is the only way to a sane life, yes?

In his book, The Red Book, Carl Jung said:

Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness, and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead should be given life.

Let the light of your madness shine! Give it life! I don’t know all the ways this madness will take shape over the next few years for me. And sometimes it feels so insignificant against the backdrop of such global violence and societal collapse. But perhaps this is the time to shine all the brighter, yes? To do the thing that doesn’t quite make sense. To lean into the thing that requires a bit more tolerance for chaos than we thought we had. To dance furiously in hard times, as Alice Walker implores us. And to honor old regrets, not by trying to relive everything we missed from our youth — even trips to Italy. But by becoming the Pathmaker. And by making the path.

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The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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May your path,
wherever it comes from,
wherever it goes,
be blessed, dear friends.

Please do reach out if you’d like. Grad school or not, I am still always to be found in The Mending Space.

Onward . . .

Forward . . .

With love . . .

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