Many of you know of Laura Ingalls Wilder from her "Little House" books. I grew up reading and rereading Little House in the Big Woods and the other books, and was so excited later to discover a collection of her essays and magazine articles in a book called Little House in the Ozarks. While thumbing through my copy of the book today, I found this gem and wanted to share it with you. You will see that though times have changed, they have not changed as much as you may think. Maybe it will give you encouragement today.
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Daily Tasks Are Not Small Things
May 1923
"The days are just filled with little things, and I am so tired doing them," wailed a friend recently. Since then I have been thinking about little things or these things we are in the habit of thinking small, although I am sure our judgment is often at fault when we do so.
Working in the garden; taking care of the poultry, calves, and lambs; milking the cows; and all the other chores that fall to the lot of farm women may appear small in itself; but the results go a long way in helping to "feed the world." Sometimes I try to imagine the people who will eat the eggs I gather or the butter from my cream and who will wear the clothes made from the wool of the lambs I help to raise.
Doing up cut fingers, kissing hurt places, and singing bedtime songs are small things by themselves; but they will inculcate a love for home and family that will last through life and help keep America a land of homes.
Putting up the school lunch for the children or cooking a good meal for the family may seem very insignificant tasks as compared with giving a lecture, wiring a book, or doing other things that have a larger audience; but I doubt very much if, in the ultimate reckoning, they will count for as much.
If when cooking you will think of yourselves as the chemist that you are, combining different ingredients into a food that will properly nourish human bodies, then the work takes on a dignity and an interest. And surely a family well nourish with healthful food so that the boys and girls grow up strong and beautiful, while their elders reach a hale old age, is no small thing.
It belittles us to think of our daily tasks as small things, and if we continue to do so, it will in time make us small. It will narrow our horizon and make of our work just drudgery.
There are so many little things that are really very great, and when we learn to look beyond the insignificant appearing acts themselves to their far-reaching consequences, we will, "Despise not the day of small things." We will feel an added dignity and poise from the fact that our everyday round of duties is as important as any other part of the work of the world.
And just as a little thread of gold, running through a fabric, brightens the whole garment, so women's work at home, while only the doing of little things, is like the golden gleam of sunlight that runs through and brightens all the fabric of civilization.
