Wisdom from Ma Ingalls
Recently I was rereading (for about the 500th time) Little Town on the Prairie. I've actually been rereading all of the Little House books over the past couple of months. The Basement o' Wonders in Kenosha has at least two copies of each, so I've been borrowing them. God, I love those books. When I was in elementary school I used to daydream about beaming Laura and her family to my house and knocking their socks off with all the rooms and modern conveniences and such. For awhile I had a Laura Ingalls Wilder obsession, and read all the nonfiction biographies I could find about her. That reminds me - my sister Jaki had read most of the books and watched the TV show as a child, but had never seen photos of the actual Ingalls family. When I found this out a few years ago, I immediately located some on the internet and showed them to her. She was permanently traumatized, especially by the real-life Pa and Carrie. (This led me to print one out, frame it, and hang it up in her bathroom one day while she wasn't looking.)
Back to Little Town on the Prairie. Laura was given an autograph album as a present from Ma and Pa. Later, Ma wrote a verse in it for Laura. I must have read it twenty times over the years and never paid much attention. For some reason, though, this time it really resonated:
If wisdom's ways you wisely seek,
Five things observe with care
To whom you speak, of whom you speak
And how and when and where
It seems so obvious ... but it's so true. I don't know why I'm so much more aware of that now - maybe because of things like the internet and instant messaging and cell phones and the multitude of other ways that anyone can say anything to anyone else (or a million other anyone elses) at a moment's notice. Maybe because I have more to say now than I used to. But I find myself constantly aware of all those things, both as they apply to myself and as they apply to the world at large. I see people who are careless about who they talk to and who they talk about and where they do that talking, and I see how much trouble it can cause, even by accident. (Maybe especially by accident.) Who hasn't seen that? I don't like censorship, but I'm a big fan of discretion and common sense. I don''t always manage either one, but I try.
I looked the verse up, and though it gets lumped in with a lot of bible verses and preaching, it seems to be originally attributed to an American journalist named William Norris. That makes sense.
Back to Little Town on the Prairie. Laura was given an autograph album as a present from Ma and Pa. Later, Ma wrote a verse in it for Laura. I must have read it twenty times over the years and never paid much attention. For some reason, though, this time it really resonated:
If wisdom's ways you wisely seek,
Five things observe with care
To whom you speak, of whom you speak
And how and when and where
It seems so obvious ... but it's so true. I don't know why I'm so much more aware of that now - maybe because of things like the internet and instant messaging and cell phones and the multitude of other ways that anyone can say anything to anyone else (or a million other anyone elses) at a moment's notice. Maybe because I have more to say now than I used to. But I find myself constantly aware of all those things, both as they apply to myself and as they apply to the world at large. I see people who are careless about who they talk to and who they talk about and where they do that talking, and I see how much trouble it can cause, even by accident. (Maybe especially by accident.) Who hasn't seen that? I don't like censorship, but I'm a big fan of discretion and common sense. I don''t always manage either one, but I try.
I looked the verse up, and though it gets lumped in with a lot of bible verses and preaching, it seems to be originally attributed to an American journalist named William Norris. That makes sense.
Labels: Basement o' Wonders, Little House
posted by BeeKay at 12:14 AM
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