An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 56, February 25, 2012
***
I really love Kahlil Gibran's poem “On Children”. It says:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
When we have children, we tend to feel about them like how we feel when we bring the new Ford home on the first day. “Wow, ain’t it cute!” We tend to treat our children like our possessions, and we tend to be proud of them like they are some kind of accomplishment of ours that we could win a trophy for. “I did it, I did it!” And, “look at what I got, look at what I got!” We have to face the truth that Life is using us to renew itself. We are in fact a result of lust and biological need to copulate, and call it Love, or call it, “uh oh, now we have to get married”, when baby arrives we are mere pawns to the power of Nature and her drive to propagate life.
Our children are simply the sons and daughters of sperm meets egg, and we are the seed and vessel at the mercy of Life’s incessant drive to procreate. Our children are not from us, they are from Nature and the miracle of Life, and we are honored to be chosen for Life to come through us. We are entrusted to be the guides and mentors of our children by Life and Nature, but not as possessors of our children. A life can not belong to another life, and no creature can truly be “ours”. At least Nature is nice to us and allows them to look like us. That helps us like our babies, and liking your baby is a very nice thing, for us and the baby, and also for Life. Of course Life also created soap operas, and in the end our baby is really made by our best friend, or Elmer Fudd. Maybe we should have noticed that our baby looked like Elmer before the end of our own soap opera. But does it matter? Do we love any baby less than another? I hope not.
Kahlil goes on:
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.
It seems like a good idea to give our children our Love. I’m sure everyone does that. But to give Love means that you expect nothing in return, and no investment in the outcome. If we give to receive, and expect a return of any kind, we are not giving Love, we are simply feeding ourselves, loading our new Ford, and expecting it’s best performance. Our children have their own futures and needs and thoughts, and they are not our own. We parents spend a lot of time and effort with blah blah blah, and more blah blah blah, as if we know better than our children. Yet our children know better for themselves, and only wish we would just love them, and stop the blah blah blah-ing at them and at them.
Nature says our job is to keep our children alive. Ours or Elmer Fudd’s, when our children survive, so does Life. That part seems basic enough, and we all do our best. But Nature did not entrust us with controlling or manipulating their souls, or hearts, or personalities, or interests. Our children will be here long after we are gone, and very often doing much better once we are gone. We feel as parents that our new Ford should be clean and good and well mannered and obedient and educated and fast and be a little of this but not too much of that, and listen to me because I know, and overall….. designed and made to make us look good. But our children are not here for that. Our children are not a representation of us, and if we feel that they are, then we are using then for our own pride or become embarrassed when they hurt our pride.
Our children have so much to give us that we lost and need, and it would be a gift to Life for us to emulate them and for us to hope to be like our children. We must never try and make our children like ourselves. Our children do not need our beliefs, or our religions, or our educations, or careers, or our interests, and should never be used to live out our lives or our idea of Life. Life does not have an interest in us as parents, for we are of the past, Life moves forward, and has already invested in the children of our children, and their children. We are already living our role for Mother Nature, and that is to help our children to survive, and to Love them. That is all she asks, and all our children ask of us.
Kahlil finishes:
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,
He loves also the bow that is stable.
Our roles as parents are enormous, for as the poem says, we are the bows and our children are the arrows. We are not the arrows, we cannot make arrows, we cannot modify arrows, and we can and will not fly like them as arrows. So what can we do to be the best bows? Ask your children if blah blah blah is the answer, or if controlling every second and aspect of their lives is what they want, and they will tell you that that is not the way, or their way. We can be the best bows we can be by being the best bows we can be. Let us all put our money where our own lives and actions are, and not where our mouths are. Children emulate what we do and how we do it, and never what we say, or expect or hope. If we want our children to be clean, good, well mannered, obedient, educated, if we want our children to be successful and upstanding, and happy…… Let us live our own lives that are clean, good, well mannered, obedient, educated, successful, upstanding, and happy. Let us live simply by example, and let us give them 20 patient years to be and fly like their own arrows, however and wherever they may fly, and with no investment in production or outcome.
Our children do not need to learn anything today or tomorrow or next week. If we Love them based on what kind of arrow they are or how they fly, we are of course not loving them at all, but just using them like we use our Ford. Love is not conditional, and we must never give and receive Love based on performance or outcome. “Good Ford, you brought us to the picnic, now I shall show you Love. Bad Ford, you burned rubber in front of the neighbor, now I shall withhold Love from you. Good Ford, you have made me proud of your achievements, now I shall show you Love. Bad Ford, you embarrass me, now I don’t Love you anymore”. We all hated this in our parents, and our children hate it in us.
Nature already knows where our children are going, and we do not. They fly out of our house like arrows into the future of Life, alive and happy, and that is the best we can do. That is our might. The more they have been Loved as their own arrows without our intervention in their lives, the further and swifter they fly. Nature and Life expect us to honor them and our children, and their future and our children's futures. Nature and Life do not want us to possess and control our children, or ever place upon them or expect of them what we feel is wanted or expected. Our children and Life already know, and we are merely their temporary home.
We want our children to be healthier and happier than we are. Let us keep them alive, let us Love them as they are. That is all we have to do. And let us leave them to fly from our homes as who they are, and not as who or how or when or why we think they should become. Our children already are their own arrows, and they thank us for our contribution to them by being the best people we can be ourselves, and then just let them be the best people they can be themselves. They will decide the outcome and whether we have fulfilled our destiny to their satisfaction, no less than we did for and about our parents. And they and life will move on without us.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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