BORN AGAIN

The idea of being born again (not referring to a religious term) or living my life all over again is something my monkey mind has entertained from time to time. What and how would I live my life differently if I know what I know now--wisdom knowing and not knowledge knowing? With all my contexts and relationships intact, the ludicrous idea becomes really a matter of how—ultimately how I would love God, love myself, love my neighbors more fully, and live my life to the fullest as God intended. 

I came across the poem below by David Whyte, titled Born Again. Below are a couple of stanzas (italicized mine). Quickly, the poem served not as a rearview mirror exercise of what my life would have been but as a forward-looking invitation to how to live out the remainder of my life. 

I want to be born again, 
in exactly the self-same life,
but fully aware this time, 
from the inside out, 
of my life to come

and to stand this time 
as a beautiful un-worrying witness, 
living beyond the need 
for this or that; 
looking with anticipation
to meeting everyone again,

Excerpt from Born Again by David Whyte

Being “fully aware” means groundedness, listening to one’s body and emotions. As life happens, I am invited to be fully engaged, not escaping, ignoring, or replacing it with a better-envisioned future “now” that does not exist in reality. “This time” is a willful decision based on a hint of regret, perhaps out of pain, and hard lessons learned of not having been fully aware. Being fully aware must be “from the inside out,” or it is not true as it requires listening to our interiority while rejecting the distracting voices from the external world.

The phrase “as a beautiful un-worrying witness” stood out when I first read it. I felt the visceral rush of the phrase, the thought of it glaring at me without judgment of the past but as an invitation to the future. Beauty stands not as an absence of pain, suffering, and difficulties or as a direct opposite of inelegance, but in the midst of them. It is not worry-free but un-worrying, a resoluteness of choosing not to worry. And as a first-person front-seat witness to my own life, not as a bystander, fully engaging and fully owning. . .

It seems that in order to live as a beautiful un-worrying witness, one needs to “live beyond the need for this or that.” Needs are everywhere and never-ending. External needs can and will dictate and often consume how we live our life, shriveling away from the full awareness of one’s internal witness.

I too have lived, driven by the need to be acknowledged and liked and to earn popularity votes.
I too have lived, driven by the need to be approved by the religious, societal, and organizational systems.
I too have lived, driven by the need to climb and boost my ego, approved by the world.

I know now that it is time to live beyond the need. . . To be more precise, one is invited to find the meeting point between external needs and interior duty which stems from being fully aware. Only in such a stance, do external needs become neither a burden nor the ego’s crown of achievement, but a true and authentic reflection of who we are inside. Finally, meeting the world’s external needs would be synchronous with my interior world.

“Anticipation to meeting everyone again” lands on me as a beckoning wish to do the relationships over. This time, fully aware and not being driven by the need to be liked or to be approved. The word anticipation connotes a future longing that can reset my expectation and stance of meeting and getting to know people from this time forward. Anticipation coming from the fully aware space would look categorically different. 

This poem is not a mere looking back poem to naively wishing to live one’s life again but as an invitation to adjust and live differently from this day forward. And that is a fine and apt reminder for me as I face my 60s. . . As Mary Oliver said language as “the serviceable clay of one’s thoughts,” my “clay” is shaped like this today.