Words from a Fearless Heart by Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

There is something in living close to the great elemental forces of nature that causes people to rise above small annoyances and discomforts.

Beginning in 1911, Mrs. Wilder, of “Little House” fame wrote a column for a local Ozark newspaper, The Missouri Ruralist; the column was titled "As a Farm Woman Thinks." 

In these columns, she hits pioneer spirit mike drops left and right.

Many of these nuggets of self-reliant gold were collected in a book titled Words from a Fearless Heart edited by Stephen W. Hines.

I offer two big shovelfuls of Mrs. Wilder’s true preachin’ below.

The stout-hearted and good souled should find much to sustain!

 

If patience and cheerfulness and courage… count for so much in man that he expects to be rewarded for them… surely such virtues in animals are worth counting in the sum total of good in the universe.

Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds.

·        Whatever the color of the stained of your corneas, well, that’s what you’ll see, my friends.

Why should we need extra time and wish to enjoy ourselves? If we expect to enjoy our life, we will have to learn to be joyful in all of it, not just at stated intervals when we can get time or when we have nothing else to do.

·        The clock is tickin’, kick-back right now, hell, everywhere. Make friends standing in line. I do. So can you.

I have never been in favor of making good resolutions on New Year's Day just because it was the first day of the year. Any day may begin a new year for us in that way.

·        Every day is a new measure of the year. Hop to it!

The uplift of a fearless heart will help us over barriers. No one ever overcomes difficulties by going at them in a hesitant, doubtful way.

It does not so much matter what happens. It is what one does when it happens that really counts.

You are the window through which you must see the world.

Let's be cheerful! We have no more right to steal the brightness out of the day… than we have to steal the purse of the stranger.

·        Preach! We’re all in this big boat of a planet together, pitch in and row. Give a hand. When it’s not your turn to row, bail water like a good crewmate.

We are so likely to see defects in institutions close at hand and imagine that further away conditions are so much better.

·        Right here, right now.

Blue is without a doubt a heavenly color, but it is better in the skies than in one’s mind.

·        Don’t live in dreams and screens—suck in that r-e-a-l life.

Did you ever take a little trip anywhere with your conscience easy about things at home, your mind free from worry, with all care cast aside and eyes wide open? You will be surprised how much adventure can enter into ordinary things.

“Oh, I have such a dreadful headache,” we say and immediately we feel much worse. Our pain has grown by talking of it.

·        Thinkin’ of bitchin’? Shhh! You’ll only make it worse and no one else wants to hear it. No one.

No one can become great who is not ready to take the opportunity when it comes.

Why not have a family motto? If the motto of a family were, “My word is my bond,” do you not think the children of that family would be proud to keep their word?

·        What’s your family motto? Your personal motto?

We may not “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy,” but we’ll not forget to stop working.

·        Get some sacred into your life—whatever that means to you.

It takes judgment to plan seeds at the right time, in the right place, and hard digging to make them grow, whether in the vegetable garden or in the garden of our lives.

We have so many machines and so many helps, in one way or another, to save time; and yet I wonder what we do with the time we save. Nobody seems to have any!

The American pioneer spirit is of courage, jollity, and neighborly helpfulness.

We are in the midst of a battle of standards of conduct and each of us is a soldier in the ranks.

·        Many complain of the conduct of others; few bear the standard of what glorious demeanor embodies.

·        Show ‘em how it’s done! Model it!

There are those who persistently disobey the laws of health, which, being nature's laws, are also God's laws, and then when ill health comes, wonder why they should be compelled to suffer.

Is there something in life you want very much? Then pay the price and take it, but never expect to have a charge account and avoid paying the bills.

An infidel asserted that he would not believe anything that he could not see. It was a good retort the Quaker made, “Friend! Does thee believe thee has any brains?”

Our next president should be chosen for his fitness for the place as though we were hiring him to attend to our own private business.

A “government of the people, for the people and by the people” can be no better than the people.

The days never have been long enough to do the things I would like to do. Every year has held more of interest than the year before.

·        The clock ticks on, our wants don’t cease.

·        Hop to the goodness now as that upper glass is emptying out.

A year of being crippled has taught me the value of my feet, and two perfectly good feet are now among my dearest possessions.

I have learned that few persons have such happy and successful lives that they would wish to spend years in just remembering.

We must first see the vision in order to realize it; we must have the ideal or we cannot approach it. But when once the dream is dreamed, it's time to wake up and “get busy.” We must “do great deeds, not dream them all day long.”

Life begins at eighty.

There are just as many hours in the day as ever, and… there is time enough for the things that matter if time is rightly used.

We go lightheartedly on our way never thinking that by a careless word or two we may have altered the whole course of human lives, for some persons who will take our advice and use it.

·        Act as if every word you utter is a world-changer.

·        Behave as if every act of yours levers the Universe.

·        Just maybe, just maybe it does.

·        Hold that door open for that person behind you, maybe their day was a “last straw” day and you just klaxon-called a change in fortune an uplift in spirit.

·        Be a person who matters by making all matters matter.

When we recover from a serious illness, just a breath drawn free from pain as a matter for rejoicing.

The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.

Everyone is complaining of being tired, of not having time for what they wish to do…It would be a wonderful relief if, by eliminating both wisely and well, life might be simplified.

It seems such a pity that we can learn to value what we have only through the loss of it. Truly “we never miss the water till the well runs dry.”

It is surprising what an opinion one sometimes forms of one’s self by mentally standing off and looking on as at a stranger.

·        Try this experiment: Dredge through your own social media posts.

·        Find your last “Woe is me” or “Allow me to bitch” rant.

·        If you find yourself shocked and or embarrassed---good on you, that’s progress.

·        If you’re not embarrassed, well, likely you’re not even reading something like this from a guy like me.

It is easier, for a time, to go with the current; but how much more can be accomplished if we would all be honest in our talk. We all despise a coward, but we sometimes forget that there is a moral as well as a physical cowardice…It is weakness to one's personality and moral fiber to deny one's opinions to falsify one’s self, while it throws broadcast into the world just that much more cowardice and untruth.

“Sweet are the uses of adversity” when it shows us the kindness in our neighbors’ hearts.

·        I’ve had some bad times, there will be more.

·        But…there have been people in those bad times that I will NEVER forget.

·        Never not be grateful for.

Some by their bad temper and exacting dispositions estrange their relatives and repel friendly advances. Then they bewail the fact that their friends are so few.

It is true that we find ourselves reflected in our friends and neighbors, and if we are in the habit of having bad neighbors, we are not likely to find better by changing our location.

If we would not be satisfied till we had passed a share of our happiness on to other people, what a world we could make!

As much good can be done by the right kind of gossip as harmed by the wrong sort. Every hear of golden gossip? A woman who was always talking about her friends and neighbors made it her business to talk of them, in fact, never said anything but good. She was a gossip, but it was “golden gossip.”

·        I love this concept, May we all be Golden Gossips!

I wonder if you all know the story of the man who is moving from one place to another because he had such bad neighbors. Just before making the change, he met a man from the neighborhood to which he was going and told him in detail how mean his old neighbors were. Then he asked the other man with the neighbors were like in the place to which he was moving. The other man replied, “You will find just the same kind of neighbors where you are going as those you leave behind you.”

 Shafts of malice aimed in anger forever fall harmless against the armor of a smile, kind words, and gentle manners.

·        May we all be antifragile well-armored Warriors of the Heart!