I often reflect on my feelings about my son, about having him, about him making me a mother, about being a parent. I’ve struggled at being able to accurately communicate those feelings to someone else as words seem so lacking. I read this and thought it most eloquently approximated how I feel about my role as parent.
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.
~Kahlil Gibran
I haven’t heard it before and it seems both profound and scary to me. Even now, when my daughter is 1, I can see her striving in her own direction and in some ways already growing away from me. I am striving to be like her and to take on board what she shows me. Food for thought!
I’ve always loved that verse.