Gibran : On Children

Christmas Day. One cannot help but think of children on Christmas Day.

We think of the child Jesus asleep in the manger. We think of our own children and the children of our family and friends. We think of the children on the streets who have no homes and possibly no gifts. We remember ourselves as children and recall the Christmases of our past.

For today, as a child myself, I remember my parents.

Mother had a poem taped inside one of her cabinets. She has had it for as long as I can remember. Reading this poem as a child is different from reading this poem as a parent. I should go and tape this poem on my own cabinet.

Merry Christmas.

ON CHILDREN

by Kahlil Gibran

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 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.