Walking the Wall

Call me by my true names

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Please call me by my true names
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 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 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.