Thursday, January 17, 2008

On Children by Kahlil Gibran

I came across this poem written by Khalil Gibran on Children in his book The Prophet.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

This is how I would like to bring up my daughter, without imposing my expectations and desires on her. To let her be who she wants to be.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love it!

Anonymous said...

Nice Poem ! and Hope she does...become what she wants to !

My first ambition was to be the guyy who carries the torch and leads us to the seat in the cinema hall ;-) I envied that guy so much for being able to see all the movies first day first show and as many times as he wants !!

Cheeers !

Anonymous said...

The most difficult thing we have to conquer as parents is the desire to create clones of us or to impose our desire for them to live our unfulfilled dreams.

This poem is so beautiful and so true.

Thank you for sharing it.

I am glad to have found you!

Heidi

Ankita Mehta said...

Even I love these lines!!! Had read these long time back. Very apt!

Imp's Mom said...

hain na ankita! luv them n always try n follow them :)