Tags
Advice, children, faith, inspiration, Kahlil Gibran, Parenting, personal, poetry, Prayer, spirituality, The Prophet, writing
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 from you.
I first read these words from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet when still in high school, a child myself, although I did not see myself that way. His words moved me then, even as they do now, so many years later, when I am raising a granddaughter.
Then I truly was “life” in its earliest stages “longing” for the life that was to be, that stretched out before me in what seemed an endless and exciting unknown potentiality.
I didn’t want to be hemmed in by the hopes and expectations of my parents, nor by their fears and warnings. I didn’t want to “learn from their mistakes,” as they cautioned me. I wanted to live my life as an adventure, learning from my own mistakes, not theirs. My life was my own and no one else’s. I wanted to risk all, moving at my own direction, and good or bad, I alone would take responsibility for the life I chose. Such were my longings then.
So I found Gibran’s parenting advice immensely inspiring, both for myself as I was moving beyond my parents into adulthood, and also for the kind of parent I wanted to be to my own children.
He goes on to say:
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 your 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.
Now, as the mother of a grown son and the guardian of his child, The Prophet’s words still move me . . . and admonish me.
How I wish now my son had heeded my warnings, and that they had been louder and clearer. How I wish he had chosen paths more safe and sane, had lived up to all the potential I saw in him then and see still.
But those are my fears, my regrets, not his. I must loose him and let him go, and see the direction in which he flew as his own choice. It was never mine to make or change or regret. I had longed when young to make and learn from my own mistakes, and so must he. But that learning is his alone to make or forsake in his own good time.
As for his child, my little granddaughter, she too is an arrow who will fly beyond my bending, beyond my ability to see or guide her life’s flight. Will my warnings to her be louder and clearer? No doubt. Will she heed them, or long to learn from her own mistakes, as I had, as her father must? We shall see.
She, as her father, is in the Archer’s hand. And I must trust, trust, trust that each will reach that mark upon the path of the infinite toward which the Archer aims with gladness. They are, after all, Life’s sweet longing for itself.
As am I.
First posted here five years ago.
Deborah J. Brasket 
These are wise and touching reflections on parenting Deborah. I’ve never been a parent, but Kahlil Gibran’s words have resonated deeply with me too. It seems we can only encourage others and model what we wish to teach. Ultimately, each must choose their own path.
So true, Brad. I dip into The Prophet every now and then, forgetting what sage advice he has on marriage and so many other things a well.
It might be time for me to revisit the book!
In the book Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal it’s written that “[even] well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (pg.24).
Ergo, every parent should be knowledgeable about factual child-development science so that they’re more enabled to rear their children in a more psychologically functional and sound manner.
Yet, people are willing to procreate, some prolifically even, regardless of their [at best] questionable ability to raise their children in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. Many people seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they [people] will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
I sometimes wonder how much immense long-term suffering might have been avoided had these people received mandatory child-development science curriculum as high-school students.
After all, dysfunctional and/or abusive parents may not have had the chance to be anything else due to their lack of such education and their own dysfunctional/abusive rearing as children.
As a moral rule, a physically and mentally sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter!
May we heed Kahlil Gibran’s wise words. It seems we can only encourage and model what we wish to teach.
That’s so true, Brad. Thank you.
Beautiful, Deborah! This must be the wisest parenting advice ever offered. And equally useful to both child and parent.
Thank you, Camilla. It was really interesting to engage with his advice as both a child and later as the parent. As you say, it works well both ways.
This is so insightful 👏
I’m happy you think so. Thank you so much for coming here and responding!
You’re most welcome, Deborah 😃
The image that opened your post had me wondering who the artist was. I was surprised to find from an online copy of the 1926 edition of The Prophet that “the twelve illustrations in this volume are reproduced from original drawings by the author.” What imagination to fashion young people into an adult archer’s bow.
I know! So evocative. All of his illustrations are wonderful if you get a chance to view them.
In the movie K-PAX, the visiting extraterrestrial ‘Prot’ says to the clinical psychiatrist interviewing him: “On K-PAX, everyone’s children’s wellbeing matters to everyone, as everyone takes part in rearing everyone else’s offspring.”
I’ve always found this concept appealing: Unlike with humans, every K-PAX-ian child’s good health seems to be in everyone’s best interest.
“It takes a village to raise a child,” says an African proverb.
At the risk of being deemed Godless thus evil (or, far worse, a socialist), I strongly feel that the wellbeing and health of all children needs to be of genuine importance to us all. And healthy, properly functioning moms and dads are typically a requisite for this.
But I’m not holding my breath, as I’ve found that most people are pessimistic and/or hostile towards such concepts. To many people, such ideas, if ever implemented, would be too much like communism thus, by extension, somehow the end of the world.
Meantime, too many people will procreate regardless of not being sufficiently knowledgeable of child development science to parent in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. They seem to perceive thus treat human procreative ‘rights’ as though they (potential parents) will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture their children’s naturally developing minds and needs.
As liberal democracies we cannot or will not prevent anyone from bearing children, even those who selfishly recklessly procreate with disastrous outcomes. We can, however, educate young people for this most important job ever, even those who plan to remain childless, through mandatory high-school child-development science curriculum.
After all, a mentally as well as physically sound future should be EVERY child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. And the wellbeing of ALL children needs to be of great importance to us all, regardless of how well our own children are doing.
Mindlessly ‘minding our own business’ often proves humanly devastating. Yet, largely owing to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, however, the prevailing collective attitude (implicit or subconscious) basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or ‘What is in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support social programs for other people’s troubled families?’
While some people will justify it as a normal thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving OIIIMOBY can debilitate social progress, even when social progress is most needed. And it seems this distinct form of societal penny wisdom but pound foolishness is a very unfortunate human characteristic that’s likely with us to stay.
Still, we can resist that selfish OIIIMOBY. If I may quote the late American sociologist Stanley Milgram, of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
______
“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.”
—Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marcellus