Written by Maria Popova
In the last years of his long life, which included world wars and massacres and many horrors, the great cellist and human rights lawyer Pablo Casals urged humanity to “make this country fit for its children.” Today, as we face a world that treats its children as nothing, we are faced with a challenge like we have never been challenged to consider the deep calculations that exist to bring new life to a troubled world—how much is the right of children, what are our responsibilities to them (if we choose to have them, because it is an act of courage and responsibility to choose not to), and what it means to raise a dignified child sadly. you have never had stars and you will never meet like that again?
A hundred years ago, between two worlds and two World Wars, a Lebanese poet, artist and philosopher of Lebanon. Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883–April 10, 1931) answered these basic questions with critical wisdom in a short passage from The Prophet (public library) — the 1923 classic that also provided Gibran with the building blocks of true friendship, the courage to face the uncertainty of love, and the advice that can be given on the balance of intimacy and independence in a healthy relationship.
When a young mother with a newborn baby asks for advice about children and raising children, Gibran's poetic prophet replies:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of the Life you long for.
They come through you but they don't come from you,
And although they are with you, they are not yours.You can give them your love but not your thoughts,
Because they have their own thoughts.
You can put their bodies but not their souls,
Because their souls live in the house of tomorrow, which you will not visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but don't try to make them like you.
Because life never goes back and never forgets yesterday.
You are the bows to which your children are sent as living arrows.
The arrow sees a sign in the path of the infinite, and He bends it with His power so that His arrows travel faster and farther.
Let your bowing to the archer's hand be a joy;
For as he loves a flying arrow, so he loves a strong bow.
Complete with Susan Sontag's 10 rules of parenting and The Crescendo – an Italian watercolor serenade to the majestic prenatal biology of being a creature – then revisit Gibran on authenticity, why we make art, and his beautiful love letters to and from a woman other than herself. The Prophet he may never have been born.
