kahlil Gibran on Children

The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry essays written in English by Kahlil Gibran. It was originally published in 1923. It is Gibran’s best known work. The Prophet has been translated into over forty different languages and has never been out of print. In this book a Prophet who is about to board a ship is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition.

This book has a way of speaking to people at different stages in their lives. It has a magical quality, the more you read it the more you come to understand the words and it’s not filled with any kind of dogma and is available to anyone.

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.

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