Monday, 4th January 2021 — Happy New Year! It’s four days into the new year, and I’m wondering what the next twelve months will bring forth. After a two-week hiatus during the holidays, I’ve returned to my passion of writing to awaken humanity’s consciousness. My mind has been pondering this theme, “A New Year, New Beginnings”, since before Old Year’s night arrived on the 31st of December 2020. Perhaps, I am a deep thinker who always questions life and what adventures or twists and turns it may hold for us.
There are a few matters left over from the last year which I have been contemplating this past month, and decided to write about in my first commentary for January 2021. They concern relationships we have with one another. This subject is one which I, like most people, have significant experience. I’m constantly observing and studying human behaviour – not only in myself, but also in everyone around me.
The Siddha Yoga meditation practices that I have studied, along with Christ’s teachings, taught me to go within myself and examine the relations that I have with the Divine’s Highest Self as well as with others. I do my best not to point a finger at anyone nor to judge a person for who he or she is. It’s not easy accepting individuals for who they are. Oftentimes, their personalities and traits are dissimilar to our own. But try we must to have acceptance of our fellow human beings whether they are family or friends, acquaintances or neighbours, colleagues or strangers, whomever we encounter throughout our lives.
As most of us know, our relations with family can be tenuous. This is particularly true when it comes to siblings as well as between a parent and a child. We love our brothers and sisters even though we are capable of fighting like cats and dogs or bearing a hatred for some wrongdoing that occurred many years ago. These full of strife interactions can also happen between mothers and fathers with children at all ages and stages. Sometimes parents have a tendency to want to control what their daughters and sons say and do. It appears to be a natural occurrence in these kinds of relationships. Truthfully speaking, it is not. The only person whom we really have any controlling influence over is our very own self.
I recall, as a young adult, writing a letter to my mum in which I quoted a passage from the poet, philosopher and artist, Kahlil Gibran, who was born in Lebanon in 1883. In his book, The Prophet, published in 1923, he wrote a chapter “On Children”, which 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.
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.”
So, let us as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, teachers and adults nurture the children and youths with tender loving care. Allow them with God’s guidance to choose their souls’ paths to follow. If we build firm foundations for them from birth onward, they’ll lean on them and return to them when they go astray.
We must set our intentions to create balance and harmony within ourselves and for our family life, letting each member be whomever the Most-High designed her or him to be. Nonetheless, we need to give correction when anyone is out of alignment with herself or himself and the family unit. May the Lord help us to enrich our relationships with one another!
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Kay M Ferguson is a conscious writer, who writes under the nom de plume Empress Extraordinaire, composing words to enlighten and uplift humanity. Connect with her on social media — Facebook and LinkedIn or email anguillawriter@gmail.com.
