A Poem to Share

I have been reading Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline. The book was written with the business world in mind, but the ideas are applicable to the education world and to those who hope to lead a school. In the text, Senge writes about stewardship and references a poem by Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet. The poem is incredible. I hope you enjoy it.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.
They come through you, not from you.
And though they are with you, 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 strive
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 the 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 the bow that
is stable.