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Non, je ne regrette rien
I finished Confessions of Madame Psyche this morning. Like all of Dorothy Bryant's fiction it is detailed, intelligent, ... and a kind of spiritual education without the pretension to call itself that. On the last page, the main character reflects on all she has been through, with a calm and a self-possession that I would love -- some day -- to be able to imitate or approach:
A woman comes to sit by Lower Lake every day at exactly three o'clock. She carries an old-fashioned windup record player and one record, Edith Piaf singing Non, je ne regrette rien....
I regret nothing. It is a brave, wise song which I can now sing by heart and which I try to think of whenever I remember any part of my life as an injury or a deprivation. I regret nothing. Especially not the injuries, errors, and accidents which drove me to despair.
If I had not been pushed to the end of my rope, I don't know that I would have fallen, ever, into the reality that has given my life form and meaning.... If I had been rescued from even a little bit of that suffering, I might have been able to go on without changing, like a sleep-walker in a nightmare, wandering blindly, flailing in all directions with yearning and pain and fear. I was saved from that life, but at a price. The price was everything, and worth everything.
No, I regret nothing.
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