THE WRITING ON THE WALL
BY DAN MILLER
(originally posted October 4, 2005)
Actually, the writing was on a piece of paper, taped to my daughter's bedroom door.
Just when Karen and I were secure in the knowledge that our 6 year old liked nothing better than the constant pleasure of our company..... there it was..... the note on her door.
I'm not sure why McKensie posted it..... she's made no effort to enforce her new rule.
In fact, she never even mentioned it.
When I asked her about it, she just smiled and looked at me, glowing with wisdom known only to children.... utter astonishment that we grownups have obviously forgotten what it's like to be a child.
But I didn't completely forget.
After seeing her little sign, I recalled how -- when I was about her age -- my neighborhood pals and I put a sign on the storage room door at Michael Danish's house, a place that had become our neighborhood club house.
Or, as my big sister Sara puts it, where “our neighborhood gang" hung out.
Our sign not only disallowed grownups, but banned girls as well.
What in the world were we thinking?
Needless to say, we changed our minds on that second part a few short years later!
Now that I'm deep into being "grownup", yet a relatively new father again, I find I'm more tolerant of, and intrigued by, the quirks of kids' behavior..... much more than I was with my first batch of young-uns' (now all in their 30s).
Today, I was thinking about the enchanting words that Kahlil Gibran wrote in his masterpiece, 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 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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