TRIGGER WARNING: If the copy of The Prophet given to you upon your high school graduation eons ago is dogeared and worn from constant use, go to a safe space before reading today’s post. Someplace with bubbles and puppies.

It’s the birthday of Lebanese American author Khalil Gibran (1883-1931), best known to English readers for his book The Prophet, which has sold more than nine million copies and possibly been quoted even more—just putting this out there—than it strictly speaking deserves.

Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān was born in Bsharrī, Lebonan, then part of Syria. His father drank, gambled, and was arrested for embezzlement, and the family was accordingly poor, but Gibran later lied about this: he claimed instead that his was a wealthy, aristocratic family, with tigers for pets. When Gibran was 12, his mother left Mr. Deadbeat and moved herself and her four children to a ghetto in Boston, Massachusetts, where she supported them as a peddler. The young Gibran studied under Fred Holland Day, a publisher and photographer who “wore a turban, smoked a hookah, and read by candlelight” (see linked article) and liked Gibran because he was handsome and Oriental. (Ahem. We don’t say that anymore.)

Gibran left at 15 for college in Beirut, where Gibran, who’d always loved drawing, began writing as well. When he returned to Boston several years later, his family was dying off of tuberculosis and cancer, but his remaining sister, Marianna, supported him financially and kept house for him while he pursued his art. Gibran began exhibiting drawings and publishing stories, poems, and aphorisms in Arabic.

In 1907, Gibran met a headmistress named Mary Haskell who thought Gibran was All That and a Bag of Chips. She gave him money, sent him to Paris for a year, and spent a great deal of time educating and editing him; Gibran played along and even got engaged to her, but somehow never got around to marrying or even sleeping with her, though he had plenty of affairs with other women. Haskell was disappointed but still devoted and believed Gibran’s many lies, including the claim that he had figured out the theory of relativity before Einstein but just hadn’t bothered writing it down. (A unified field theory? I just whipped one up today. Prove me wrong.)

Gibran’s third book in English was The Prophet (1923) and it was wildly popular with the public and denigrated by critics from the start. The premise is this: Almustafa, a holy man, is leaving his place of exile and returning home, and those he is leaving beg for his wisdom; he complies with extremely vague and pleasing aphorisms that often claim that something is its opposite; as the linked article notes, “Freedom is slavery; waking is dreaming; belief is doubt… So whatever you’re doing, you needn’t worry, because you’re also doing the opposite.”

In spite of his lack of critical cred in English, Gibran is considered a major influence on Arabic poetry and literature. Gibran died at 48 of cirrhosis of the liver.

Have as fantastic a Monday as possible, given that the long, luxurious holiday is finally over, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.