A Life Changing Psalm

A Life Changing Psalm

Life is there for the taking for each one of us - full of opportunity, full of excitement, full of wonder - yet we need to be the ones to step up and work for the life we want.

Question 1: Who was I?

The list of approved poems was displayed on the screen in classroom number 2306 of Davis High school. Each one of them presenting an opportunity for so much more than the mere title that we could see. The assignment was simple - select one of the various poems, memorize it, and recite it to the class. No essays were to be written on the poems, no analysis given, no reason needed for our selection, we just needed to choose. A couple of the poems I knew already: “If”, “Richard Cory”, “The Road Less Traveled”, and a couple other poetic classics. Immediately amidst the unfamiliar stood out the name “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. That name in and of itself held wonder for me.

Every day I wake up and go through the motions. Down to the very jam I put on my single slice of whole wheat toast. And it was a good life, but I never really felt like it was mine. I woke up and went to the classes that someone told me I needed to take. I played the sport that my dad had raised me on. And I played the instrument that my mom had chosen for me. And those were how I spent my days - living a life that other people had chosen for me. And it was wonderful, I must add lest there be any misconceptions. These things were decided for me with my best interest in mind. And they were right, in a lot of ways. I was successful at tennis, and I excelled at the violin. The classes were less a decision of my individual potential as a person, and more-so for the common knowledge given to everyone blessed with the opportunity for education.

Question 2: Who did I want to be?

And now I’m sitting in the classroom of my sophomore English class. I lingered back behind the rest of the class to take a longer look at the list of poems. When I went forward, someone had already penciled in their name next to “A Psalm of Life.” Having no connection to the poem at this point besides liking the name, I signed my name next to a different selection without much heartbreak. As class was dismissed, a girl went forward, glanced at the paper, and quickly slid her eraser across a slot, before assigning herself to a different poem. More curious than hopeful, I also approached the paper. The slot next to “A Psalm of Life” was open, and I quickly claimed it as mine.

I have never had an easier time memorizing a piece of literature. The words seemed to draw feelings out of my heart that hadn’t had an explanation until Longfellow opened the door for them with words of his own. Now every day I still woke up and went through the same motions, as if on a treadmill alongside everyone else, sleepwalking through life. But the music of these words blared loudly in my thoughts, and woke me from the rhythm. They wrapped around my mind and flashed before my eyes as I watched others tread mechanically through their own lives. And for the first time, the repeated words began to change my life, beginning with “For the soul is dead that slumbers.”(3) Was the metaphorical box I found myself in suffocating my very soul? I knew that something had to change, and that I was the only one who could change it.

It began simply - introducing myself to new people. Something that would pull me slightly out of my bubble of comfort, but allow me to expand my circle of lives that could influence mine. And then I began building myself through different activities. Different clubs, petitions, activities, teams, classes - each began awakening my soul little by little. I looked to others for inspiration as well, finding motivation in Longfellow’s line “lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime.” (25) We have the power to make our lives sublime. I have the power to change my own life, and direct this creature whichever way I please.

Question 3: Who am I now?

I built my life, and I built myself around all of these little things. They served as stepping stools on a ladder that I used to pull myself out of the dark bunker in which I had been placed in “Life’s broad field of battle” (17). This came with consequences, however. Consequences I did not recognize until I left to serve a mission for my church. Yes, I was free from the bunker, but this ladder served as a connection from me and my new life, to a self that I was comfortable with, and a self that I knew much better than the person I was trying to become. And when I left on my mission, that ladder disappeared, leaving me stranded on high ground. Tennis, track, theater, piano, violin, books, and every other wrung were gone. And in my struggle to build up the “what” of myself, I had simply neglected the “who” I was. Which did not mean that I found myself with no identity, and no sense of self. But it did mean that I had to take the time to get to know who I had become through this battle of control. This was not a time of self discovery. “Not enjoyment and not sorrow is our destined end or way. But to act that each tomorrow find us farther than today.”(11)  This line from the poem described exactly what I had been doing for the last years of my life. Though the times of betterment were mingled with goods and bads, happy and sads, that was not what I was searching for. And as those things that had brought me so much meaning were temporarily given up, I was still able to be happy with who I was and what I was doing, because being a missionary was another opportunity to progress.

This obsession with progression continued to tangle its firm fingers around my wrists, handcuffing them to a never ending mental battle, a battle that I am still fighting. The idea of regression of any kind makes me anxious. So much of what I do is limited. There will be a day when I will never run a faster race, never hit a harder serve, never see the lights on another stage, and there will be a day when the facts and words of my education slowly slide from my aging mind. But that’s exactly why we do all we can right now, isn’t it? We have to live in the present, and take advantage of every opportunity while we can. “Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate, still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.”(33-36)