''Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.''

These words were made famous by United States President John F. Kennedy in his 1961 inauguration speech. He should have said, ''In the words of Kahlil Gibran … '', referring to the Lebanese-American poet and artist who lived from 1883 to 1931.

But Gibran never intended these words to be addressed by a president to his people. He was writing an open letter, in Arabic, to Lebanese parliamentarians in 1925, during the fall of the Ottoman Empire. His letter was titled ''The New Frontier'', which gives a completely different meaning and context. ''Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?'' he wrote. ''If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.''

JFK even used the new frontier idea in his convention acceptance speech, a few months earlier, and later made it a theme of his administration, saying: ''We stand today on the edge of a new frontier - the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats.''

As we reflect on the year of the Arab Spring, Gibran's words apply to aspiring Arab leaders today in precisely the way he intended nearly a century ago.