Please Call Me By My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh
Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive,
in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart
is the birth and death of all that is alive.
I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
And what is my name? A rose is a rose is a rose—and by any other name it remains a rose. Like an onion my names are pulled off layer by layer.
The young child, quietly seated off by herself in a corner—contemplating—as she listens to the arguing adults, wishing she were elsewhere. Then scrounging through the family’s important papers, hoping to find the documents attesting to the fact that she was not of their blood.
The young girl, writing poetry of life’s seeming abyss. Marking time. Awaiting adulthood, allowing escape, to find her own way. Counting her losses as it forces her independence.
The young adult, assuming responsibilities beyond her years—caring for 2 motherless children and their bereaved father, while escaping into a clandestine love affair with a mentor 30 years her senior.
The young woman, coming into her own, upon graduating, traveling across country and into Mexico to find a new felt freedom to alight in California for months, then return to the “Big Apple”, slipping till becoming a woman and opening her heart and soul to another mentorer—eventually having him slip a ring onto her left hand as she blossomed into the person she wanted to become.
Peel of another layer as she evolved into her career and motherhood, only to be shattered by the reality of not being able to “have it all” as her marriage ship crashed and she had to let go of the life ring in order for her son’s and her survival.
Then the names, ex wife, single mother, sole supporter. Names she kept as years sped by and age spots started to appear.
Then maturity, new loves, lost loves, loves that have moved on, outliving deaths, baton passing, as the name Survivor stays.
