ON CHILDREN

 

Joyful Teachings by Ivan Guaderrama

ON CHILDREN:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children. And he said:

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, The Prophet – A Timeless Masterpiece

Come to me, O ye children!

For I hear you at your play,

And the questions that perplexed me

Have vanished quite away.

 

Ye open the eastern windows,

That look towards the sun,

Where thoughts are singing swallows

And the brooks of morning run.

 

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,

In your thoughts the brooklet’s flow,

But in mine is the wind of Autumn

And the first fall of the snow.

 

Ah! What would the world be to us

If the children were no more?

We should dread the desert behind us

Worse than the dark before.

 

What the leaves are to the forest,

With light and air for food,

Ere their sweet and tender juices

Have been hardened into wood –

 

That to the world are children;

Through them it feels the glow

Of a brighter and sunnier climate

That reaches the trunks below.

 

Come to me, O ye children!

And whisper in my ear

What the birds and the winds are singing

In your sunny atmosphere.

 

For what are all our contrivings,

And the wisdom of our books,

When compared with your caresses,

And the gladness of your looks?

 

Ye are better than all the ballads

That ever were sung or said;

For ye are living poems,

And all the rest are dead.

 

-          Henry Wadsworth Longfellow