Life’s Longing for Itself
Khalil Gibran
Kahlil Gibran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahlil_Gibran
Kahlil Gibran: Poet of the Ecology of Life
http://www.alhewar.com/Gibran_Eco.htm
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.
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All things in this creation exist within you, and all things in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and the closest things, and there is no distance between you and the farthest things, and all things, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are within you as equal things. In one atom are found all the elements of the earth; in one motion of the mind are found the motions of all the laws of existence; in one drop of water are found the secrets of all the endless oceans; in one aspect of you are found all the aspects of existence.
They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
For what is it to die, but to stand in the sun and melt into the wind? And when the Earth has claimed our limbs, then we shall truly dance.
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.