A Psalm of Life

In these days when we face both natural disaster, the floods in the North, and tension at the border, all at the same time, many of us may feel worn out. Some may feel discouraged. Some may feel frustrated.

I’d like to share a short poem. In Thai it would be translated as “บทสดุดีแห่งชีวิต” (I translated it directly from the word Psalm in the Bible).

A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

The meaning, as I put it in Thai, is this:

The lives of people in the past remind us that what we go through today, once we get past it, will leave footprints for those behind us, for them to follow, like footprints on the sand.

Those footprints may mean a great deal to the people behind us who are in despair. When they see our footprints, they may find the courage to get up and fight on. So let us get up and fight on, with a heart ready to face everything, and wait patiently without losing hope.

So this poem reminds us that even if what we face is not easy, each of us has the power to create meaning in this world out of the hardship we are going through, with the courage, patience, and unyielding hearts of all of us.