CHILDREN ARE NOT YOUR CHILDREN…

How can a person living so long ago be so relevant? Khalil Gibran was surely much ahead of his times and an evolved soul.

Gibran was born in Lebanon and later moved to the United States with his family. He was an exceptional artist, a poet and a writer.  I read what he had written about children, much before I had mine….actually it was when I was a child, sometimes I still do, we don’t really grow up in our heads do we? Its called keeping the inner child alive I say :).  This reminds me of a post I read about Two women in their 80’s laughing and having fun and one asks the other, ” So when is it that this Old enough to know better, supposed to kick in?” I guess, back in ages when human life according to our scriptures was 300 – 400 years, 80 would have been so young!! Of course, the body would have looked younger as well. Lets just blame the earths gravity for pulling us down!

My apologies for digressing, So I was saying something about reading Gibrans poem / song about children and I fell in love with it! So much so that I must have quoted a part of it nearly a million times (figuratively of course 🙂 It was liberating to read and understand it in my 20’s. Hence sharing it with you all – yes what is the use of bringing up replicas of yourself, they come with something unique, something you cannot perhaps comprehend.  you may give them your love but not your thoughts, you can strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you, for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday!

Gibran says……

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.

So unlike what parenting used to be, but made immediate sense to the child in me. If you want to see God, look into a young child’s eyes, the smile, the innocence, the inborn delight! All so beautiful and why would we want to curb that? Let them be, let them smile, let them not get fragmented into becoming our conditioning. Let them fly! (with adequate safety measures 😉 

Like they say- Give them wings to fly off and a home for them to come back to, or something to that effect.

I hope it resonates with you……

A humble prayer to Swamiji – Gurudev, please help us shed the burden of kaput belief systems, that drag us down, so that we can again walk with a hop and a skip and let our eyes twinkle – Pranam.

May we all find our inner light!

Jai Shri Hari