BeCuriouzLearn something new every day
Your children are not your children
💡 Children belong to life, not to their parents; the parent's role is to be the steady bow that launches them into their own future.
Few passages have comforted more parents than On Children, which opens with a jolt: "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, they do not belong to you.
Gibran urges parents to give children their love but not their 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." The task is not to mold a child into a copy of yourself but to release them into a future you'll never see.
The famous closing image is the archer and the bow: God is the archer, the child the living arrow, and the parent the bow that must bend willingly. "Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness" — for the bow's whole purpose is to send the arrow far.
Source: The Prophet — Kahlil Gibran