The Musings of a Journeyman

In a few hours’ time I my firstborn, Jared Dominic Lacsamana Arnesto will come into the world.  I am quarter-way around the world away.  The excitement of holding my wife and child will have to be subdued and delayed for three or four months.  Until the time arrives, I can only be… excited.  My wife will have to endure a lot in the coming months, with me so far away; only her family and my family will have to fill in the support that I will not be able to provide.

We go on discussing earlier this week whether I will continue working far away from her for another year. There are so many things to consider now; it’s not just me and my her anymore.  We will be responsible for another life, a life that I will have a direct hand in nurturing, moulding, guiding, coaching, and loving.  I am happy-sad-scared-anxious.  Just too many things to feel at the same time.  Just too far away.

I can only anticipate tomorrow’s coming.  I just hope nothing unexpected happens during the operation.  I hope the doctors can operate immediately on Jared, so that the healing will also be immediate.  I hope my boy is strong like his mother.  I will pray for so many things tonight.

I’d like to share this poem.  Thank God for poetry lessons back in high school.

The Psalm of Life

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!–
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,–act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

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.