All the True Vows

I only needed to read the first four lines of this poem by David Whyte. How much time and how many years might a person spend, hoping for someone else's approval, seeking evidence and confirmation that what is felt, what is known, what is honored is good and right if only because it belongs only to the one who owns it?

I am a strong and reasonably healthy person. I'm not perfect, but I know how to live and I don't hold back love. And yet, that is my public self. That is how I try to be, how I want to be seen.

This poem pushes and prods me to face and be sure how I see myself. What could be more important?

I offer it to you for the same purpose. I hope you will find it well worth the read.

love
kj

All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.

By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,

it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you'll find
what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late
to turn my face again.
♥


"All the True Vows" from The House of Belonging by David Whyte. �Copyright © 1997, 2004 by David Whyte.