Letting Go

What can a person give to their children besides love. My son Is 18 years old now and is itching to go out and live his life, and I am coming to realize that love is all I have for him. He shuns protection, wastes money, denies offers of time, ignores advice and rolls his eyes at concern. I have come to accept that my dreams are not his dreams, and that while he was once a part of me and came from me, he is now a separate person who must find his own way. So, what can I give him besides love? There is nothing else.

Still, there is a sense of peace that comes with this realization - and I suppose that peace is what is referred to as "letting go."I will always love him ferociously with all of my heart, and will always want him to have joy and happiness in his life - but he must now provide those things for himself.

Khalil Gibran said:

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of lifes 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. 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 archers hand be for gladness; for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable.

The Prophet