Bows and Arrows

I am, if anything, a baby whisperer. Give me a crying baby in a clean diaper and I will have it cooing like a dove in not many minutes. So it was that, as I lay last evening with Kyle cuddled in my arms, sleeping peacefully on my chest, I gave thought to his future.

There are roughly 6.6 billion human beings living on the earth today. Four more are born every second of every day, replacing two others who die every second of every day. Yet, regardless of the duration and content of their lives and the circumstances of their death, every one of them started out as a baby, little more than a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter of life. So just how is it that each of their life stories is as different as the flakes of falling snow?

Whether in a physical or metaphysical sense, every one of us decends from a common ancestor. Every one of us has an "X" chromosome that is a direct physical link to Mother One. Genetic mutations over time certainly account for some of our differences. But even identical twins separated at birth can have remarkably dissimilar life stories. Indeed, we each must live inside our own skin. So it is that our environment plays an important role in writing our life stories. One twin growing up in Darfur necessarily will live a life writ far differently than the other twin in, say, Palm Beach.

Then there comes the question of free will. Having spent the last week around Kyle since 45 minutes after his birth, I am of the opinion that we have only the potential for free will at birth. Upon the cutting of the umbilical cord, the newborn is little more than a machine bent on breathing, suckling and sleeping. Everything the infant does is ruled by genetics and environment, not unlike a fledgling on first flight. Yet at some magic moment somewhere down the line this new human being somehow has their first thought. And, from that moment on, this new person has the power to exercise free will within the limits of their genetic code, environment and that something we call imagination that, to close the circle, is empowered by the exercise of free will.

And, finally, we come to the question of parents, the physical creators, by virtue of free will, of this new child. For answers to that question it would be difficult, if not impossible, to improve upon what Khalil Gibran wrote of children in "The Prophet".

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."

And he said:

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 your 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.

Kyle's future? I cannot know it. I can only pray that the bows be strong and stable, enabling the arrow to fly swift and far and free upon the path of the infinite tomorrows.