Once, about four years ago, I was misquoted in an interview. It was the last question I was asked (“Is there anything that you want to say that you didn’t get to say?”) and I answered it with these words, “Well, I guess I want to mention that luck matters.”

The interviewer misunderstood me, though, and so when the piece was published, my answer read, “I want to mention that love matters.”

I laughed out loud when I saw “love” standing there in the place of “luck.”

That was four years ago and I haven’t really thought about the interview since. But it is spring here; and yesterday I was down at the creek and the world has been transformed, refashioned, made anew. Every blossom on every branch of every tree is ready to burst.

In Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy’s introduction to Rilke’s Book of Hours, there is this line: “Rilke never lost his conviction in the utter reality of the world, or in our human capacity to redeem it through that act of transforming attention, which is naming—or love.”

To pay attention, to name, to see, is to love.

I’d like to do that interview again. I’d like for it go this way:

Is there anything you want to say that you didn’t get to say?

I would like to say what a blessing it is, sometimes, to be misunderstood. Because the misunderstanding helps us understand.

What do you mean? What are you trying to say?

I mean to say that I wish I had said love matters, because I am convinced, now, that it is the thing that matters most.

Is there anything else that you would like to say?

Yes. Look. Spring is here. Pay attention. The world is getting ready, again, to blossom.