Children

When my daughter was baptized, a friend of mine read the following passage from The Prophet of Khalil 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 to-morrow, 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.
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.

While I was reading another book, the author cited this passage; it was like we received this gift and, in the thurmoil of the early years of a child, we forget it on a shelf. And then, today, while I was looking on those shelves for something quite different, I rediscovered it.

I will read this to my daughter, now that she's old enough to understand; hopefully, one day she'll find it on her shelves as well.