In honor of my parents… two of the links in a chain of my ancestors…
As I go forward in my life in the coming decades, I will attempt to take with me the highest of what they had to offer. Love, devotion, consistency, optimism, and perseverance. I will also leave behind the dynamics that didn’t serve but were remains of wounds of past ancestors.
My point of view is, each generation has the duty to carry forward the highest of what was given to them from the previous generations, and make new pathways which are uniquely their own, all while leaving behind dynamics, often unconscious, of what no longer serves.
I watched my parents go through that process with their own parents. Then it came time I had to do it also. I say had to because it is bittersweet. Sometimes the changes I had to make created pushback in them. In their own young lives the process seemed normal. When their own kids grow up, it feels different.
Early in adulthood I found a Kahlil Gibran poem that encapsulates what I mean:
Poem titled: On Children
From the book: The Prophet
“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but are 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 arrow may go swift and far,
Let your bending in the archer’s hand before gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So He loves also the bow that is stable.”
In my opinion, a similar sentiment communicates from the song ‘Father and Son’ by Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam
Some might say, well that refers to sons, not daughters. I can say having lived it for forty years as a daughter, it applies to daughters also.