Oh, how I love this image Emma captured of Robin, my granddaughter, on the Central Park Carousel for the first time in her  young life.

That is the closest thing to magic our children and grandchildren will experience in our time, the magic is being squeezed out of our lives by lawyers, bureaucrats, insurance adjusters and politicians.

The real horses and the elephants are all gone or being taken away in the name of animal rights. The magic for kids lives on You Tube or in moments like this.

Someone asked me the other day in an e-mail whether I regret living so far from Robin, and seeing her so infrequently.

Sure I do, I wish I was the one who took her to the carousel for the first time in her life, just look at her face.

But I practice radical acceptance, it has become an important part of my life, a critical way of healing fear and shame – and yes, regret. Regret, like nostalgia, is a trap.

I’ve chosen my life and it is my life, and I love it and respect it, and regret is just another way of speaking poorly of my life.

In our world, so many of us are taught we are not good enough, we feel insecure about ourselves, we are taught to be afraid much of the time to worry about money, aging, illness, the future. We fear abandonment or rejection or  failure.

Radical acceptance is really the love of ourselves, acceptance and pride in who we are, the healing of our emotional selves.

I wish I lived near Robin, and that I could be a regular part of her life, but that is not the life I chose, or the life she lives. I accept it rather than regret, I accept the pain of it, but not the suffering.

That is the choice I have, that is what acceptance means.