Reading The Prophet
My favorite excerpts (as of February 2023)
I just finished reading The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, a recommendation by my lovely friend Diya. The book is beautiful and full of wisdom, and it touches upon just about every meaningful topic in life, from love to work to friendship –– I simply can’t put it into words how life-changing it is! My palm-size copy, which fits nicely in the pocket of my winter coat, has accompanied me on the tube, at the bus stops, and on park benches in the past week. I read slowly to savor its grace.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts from the book, and I’m sure I will discover more passages of resonance and solace when I go back to it again and again in the future:
Love
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Work
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.
You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
Buying and Selling
To you the earth yields her fruit, and you shall not want if you but know how to fill your hands.
It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied.
Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.
Pain
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in tl1e sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Friendship
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
Pleasure
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger. of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
With love,
Erica