Note to Myself No. 12

When I was in the year-long memoir writing class

at University of Washington,

the instructor extraordinaire Theo Pauline Nestor

said that this Rolling Stones song

was the perfect way to remember

the narrative arc of a memoir.

You can't always get what you want.

But if you try

sometime you just might find

you get what you need.

Think about it.

Life is filled with frustrations,

with detours from the path 

we think we're supposed to follow.

But sometimes, once we're pushed off
"our" path

we find the new one takes us

to strange and wonderful places.

We don't always know

what we need.

Sometimes we learn by 

accident or adversity.