Quemada, Alexander T.

GB-B

Reflection: The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

Accordingly, the artist and writer Gibran, born in the country of Lebanon, became known
for his English works and mystical artworks. Among Gibran’s great literature, one of the most
famous and purposeful ones is the Prophet. The Prophet by Khalil Gibran is a series of short
texts on love, work, children, beauty and more. Moreover, this work are spiritual, philosophical,
magical and insightful. Thus, He establishes light, guidance and wisdom to every issues that a
person encounters in life. The entire poetic story is revolved around the narrative of a prophet
named Al-mustapha who is leaving the place of Orpheles and asked questions by people about
the different life princples. With this, I would say that his work symbolizes “teaching”

Upon reading the poem “The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran, every chapters has a complexity
of text, sentences or phrases that I felt, saw and read. In connection, a reader like me should
possessed a deep and concrete understanding of the story in order for me to know the themes and
lessons behind the poem-“The Prophet”. Thus, my thoughts and emotions throughout the poetic
story were mixed because it gave me an impression of excitement inside my soul and mind.
Thus, I imagined myself that I was in the story or a new world. With this, I have just read the
best poem that I have ever read in my 20 years of existence.

To continue, my analyzation are as follows: “The Love” the first prose of the poem which
it only signifies about appreciation of life as a whole, and to show gratitude and happiness. Also,
love can free and purify someone’s soul because he or she received unconditional love. Love, as
I have come to grasp, is the most powerful symbol in the universe and it is the essence of life.
When someone is in love, I or we should not hold back. We must allow everyone to experience
love because they see and feel the true meaning of “contentment and value.” Love can be seen in
family, marriage or couple partners, pets, nature and even for oneself. In addition, as human
beings, we depend on each other, even though we have differences, love binds us all together and
making our place a much better habitat. In the end, God made us out of his love because while
we are sinners, God died for us in which he sacrificed his own life and suffers on the top of the
cross for us. “The Marriage,” it proves us about how sacred this scene is to partners, wherein it
showers togetherness, loyalty, assurance, safety, love and trust between them. My mother and
Father told me that in marriage, love is not servitude. Thus, it should show love-free, harmony,
tolerance, support and commitment to one another. When partners decide to get married, they
actually dream of having a good family, raising their future children together and dedicating their
relationship to each other. They promise to full their love to everything for them to have a long-
lasting relationship. Actually, my Tito a priest told us that there’s no secret at all to have a good
relationship. Thus, for him, a magnificent marriage only require one single solution- to fall in
love many times with your partner. “The Children” conveyed parent’s love and understanding
on how to properly raise a child. This chapter will serve as a guide to parents. When two married
couples become parents for the first time, they don’t know what to do. Thus, we can observe that
having a child is not easy and it is not easy as well to provide essentials such education, food,
clothes, safety and protection, if both parents don’t have proper plans for themselves and
children. Also, dedication and love are the top most essential trait a parent should possessed
because it can be a help parents to properly raise their children. Children deserves to be love by
their parents because parent’s love are like guiding hand who take their children to a right path
whenever they get lost in life. In the end, we can’t imagine our life without our parents love and
support. “The Work” is fulfilment of life, binding to others and God. Also, Our Work must be
performed with complete devotion and offers with love to aim improvement. When we are
doing great in our work, we can achieve more enjoyment and satisfaction in jobs. Eventually,
this chapter also provides us the opportunity to interact with a lot of different people in which we
can attained good leadership, teamwork, communication and friendships. Working with pure
intentions will give human being more blessings in life. Lastly, our work will define who we
truly are and what we are capable of. “Joy and Sorrow” are inseparable to each other. God
creates a lovely life and world for us. He crafted this so that we could live a happy life. However,
this does not imply that our lives will always be happy and predictable. We will faced with
multiple situations involving various problems and issues. Thus, we must confront and eliminate
all of them. With this, only then we can find the happiness we seek and wish for. Otherwise, we
will always be sad about things in life. Along the way, there will be darkness, difficulties, and
problems. But how we deal with them is up to us. There will be no one individual who is not
affected by sadness, sorrow, or darkness in life. God created both light and darkness and
separated it in order to make us understand the principle of the two things. He wanted us to
understand that light can be cover by darkness if we will do nothing and after every time of
battling the darkness, there is the return of light that shines upon us. This means that whenever
we have joy in our life we should understand that we need to face sorrow, problems for some
duration. “The Beauty” chapter gave us the meaning of true beauty, wherein it lies within
us.Thus, touches everyone by giving confidence, gratefulness, gracefulness and happiness. It
blossoms like a flower and evolves into a sparkling energy that’s positively amusing. Thus, It
can be a life-changing and alluring to human beings. Real or true beauty is born from self-
esteem, self-acceptance and compassion and grateful. “The Death” is the last cycle or separation
of soul of human being on to the world. Sometimes, death causes fear to humans and they will
try to avoid this situation at all cost. Death can be define as blessings and new chapter of life
because we are no longer experiencing challenges and despair in our lives.

In line With this, I have learned that ‘The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran embodies
Understanding oneself. Understanding oneself is among the most interesting and challenging
tasks that a person should be able to achieve in a lifetime. It goes beyond knowing one’s identity
or being aware if who and what we are. At this time, those themes mentioned above help me
understand myself deeply. It teaches me good morals that will help achieve self-actualization.
Within the context of finding true-oneself, being cognizant of one’s purpose life, accepting
mistakes and limitations, celebrating strengths, enabling Love and care for others will lead me to
have good well-being, life-satisfaction and greatness for lifetime. However, upon reading the
poem, I have encountered a challenge that is opposing to my belief in which I questioned myself
that “should love always be the key in order to achieve greatness, peace and freedom or there are
other factors to be consider?” But in the end, it surprises me that the answers and solutions were
already given by Khalil Gibran throughout the entire poem. Moreover, this story of Gibran is
relevant until now to our society. Those themes can be observed in homes, culture and traditions,
beliefs, states and surroundings as well. Those phrases are powerful and meaningful which can
impact one’s life. It provides global spiritual wisdom to everyone. Thus, it can give light, hope
and vision to human beings. With this, it can transform us to a better version of ourselves.

In conclusion, this poem help me to further understand my self and society as whole. It
will allow us to maximize our decision making and potentials as human. The prophet symbolizes
“teaching.” With this, it is like a teacher that guides us to achieve better life choices and success.
The most important thing to note here is that “Love” is the most powerful concepts that shapes
everything such as marriage, death, Work and among others. Therefore, if we are struggling with
an unhealthy-life cycle, we must rebuild ourselves by pouring love on ourselves so that we can
stand and achieve true oneself.