I grew up hearing my father repeat this line many times making sure I heard him - God helps them that help themselves. I am all but certain he did not know the provenance of the saying but I would guess he had heard it from my grandfather who taught him just about everything he knew outside what he learned in college and beyond. I think this line pre-dates his college years so its more likely than not he heard this line for the first time from his father and it clearly made a strong impression given how many times I heard it growing up.
This sentence were served up as a reminder every time my father found me failing to apply myself which was rather often. Early in life, I had learned how to earn the tokens that proved I was working and making progress while not applying my mind to the task. There was a pride in being "clever" enough to do this but it frequently dissolved in the face of paternal disapproval at my scheming ways.
Nothing fundamentally changed about how I went about my business but it raised awareness that I was doing things wrong and somewhere down the road there would a reckoning. As an adult first and then as a parent, I have tried to understand what makes a kid stop wanting and trying to be better. What makes them want to take lazy shortcuts. My answer in hindsight is that I was bored and did not think I was missing anything important.
Neither is a valid excuse and I wish I was probed more on why I doing things I was doing instead of being issued warnings such as this one. I discovered the origin of this saying from reading an essay by Ben Franklin where he says: We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly, and from these taxes the commissioners can- not ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us ; God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says in his Almanac of 1733
No comments:
Post a Comment