We Came to this World to Sing

Senor Morales, my most-wonderful high school Spanish teacher, made his classes memorize one stanza from the Argentinian epic poem Martin Fierro. If I remember right, it went like this:

Cantando me ha de morir
Cantando me ha de enterar
Y cantando me ha de llegar
Al pie del Eterno Padre.
Desde el vientre de mi madre,
Vine a este mundo a cantar.

Roughly translated, it reads:

I will die singing
I will be buried singing
And I will arrive singing
At the foot of the Eternal Father.
From my mother’s womb,
I came to this world to sing.

I told my husband that if I could substitute “writing” for “singing,” the poem would describe me to a T. Basketball would suit him, he answered. In a sense, writing is my song, basketball his.

All of us come to this life with some passion, some drive, something that brings us joy or satisfaction in the doing. Something that we came to this world to do. Most of us get swamped with daily tasks and burdens and struggle to find space for the passion we arrive with.

Of course it’s impossible to ignore obligations. But what did you come here to do?