Busy Being Born
Robert Allen Zimmerman, a man I admire greatly, will turn eighty years old on Monday. Through the years, there have been times when that I didn’t think he would make it due to concerns about his health. And now, as always, I am grateful for the influence he has had on my life ever the past five decades. I was fifteen, and he was thirty when I was first introduced to him. While you may not recognize Mr. Zimmerman's name, you no doubt know him by the name he took for himself when he was twenty-one, Bob Dylan. When asked about why he changed his name in an interview many years ago, he shrugged his shoulders and answered, as only he could, “I don’t really know. I think some people are just born to the wrong name. It happens.”
When I was in college, I had a poster on my dorm wall that contained a lyric from an obscure Dylan song. The lyric was, “He not busy being born is busy dying.” That lyric speaks to me today as powerfully as it did fifty years ago. Dylan has lived that lyric out in the way he has continually reinvented himself and his music. In doing so, he has served as a role model for me to keep embracing the creativity of the present moment instead of trying to relive or hold on to the past.
If you have ever seen Bob in concert, as I have close to twenty times, you know that he rarely ever sings one of this song the same way twice. He is always trying out new arrangements and even adding new or altered lyrics. When asked about this, he said he tries not to ever think about or recapture the past, saying it futile to try to do so and a waste of time and energy. By continuously rearranging his past catalog of songs and continuing to write new material for over sixty years, he has evolved and modeled what it means to continue to be “busy being born.
As proof of Dylan’s continuing to evolve and live fully in the present, just last year, he released a new album (his 39th), and one of its songs, “Murder Most Foul,” reached number one on the Billboard record chart. At age 79, and after recording some of the most iconic songs of the modern area, this turned out be another new achievement for Dylan as it was his first song to achieve that honor.
I want to close with the lyrics of a touching song Dylan wrote in 1973 as a prayer and blessing for his children. The song, “Forever Young,” also speaks to me as a prayer and blessing for all of us as we grow older. Staying forever young means having a curious and evolving spirit, not living in or trying to hold on to the past, but continuing to embrace the creative possibilities that remain, right now, in the present moment.
May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.
May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.
May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.
And just in case any of you forward this column to him, I want to be sure to add, “Happy Birthday, Bob. And even though the times they are a-changing, thanks for showing us all these years how to stay forever young and how to stay busy being born—again, and again.”
By Scott Stoner, for Living Compass. If you would like to receive this column by email every Friday morning, you can subscribe, and read past columns, at www.livingcompass.org/wwow
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