Your Children are not Your Children by Kahlil Gibran & My View

In my personal life I am going through some difficult time with parents & relatives. Relation between me and my family is going worse day by day. Its like they want to deploy their thoughts, their ideology into me & my life.

I feel like, I am an ornaments to them which can not do anything without their wish cause that will hamper their image on their society. But they even can’t think that I might have my own dreams, my own society and I might have little honor and prestige in my society. In my views they have become so selfish 😦 and I remain the poor guy.

Because of this sadness, I updated my facebook status with

my parents don’t know they give me house not home!!! and first comment was by Shaiyan bhai (Imtiaz Ilahi ) with the poem of Kahlil Gibran.
I read some poems of this great Lebanese-American poet. But this is awesome and perfectly matched with my position now. Wish if my parents would understood this poem.

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 our 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 (1883 – 1931)

My easy understanding of this poem is we are children of GOD who is archer in the poem, we came in to this world through our parents which is replaced by bows and we are the arrows. After giving us birth, they should prepare ourself to walk alone and go forward but should not set our destination as the archer throw the arrow in path of infinite. How far we will go depends on the strength of bows.

Dad, Mom, you through me in wrong path.. Its not my fault, I am not you.. I am me, the arrow going in wrong path.