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Please Call Me By My True Names
by Thich Nhat Hanh
~ listen ~

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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.

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 all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries
and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy
and my pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up and
the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.

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What are your north stars?

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