Laura Ingalls Wilder on Success

Recently at a yard sale I found a copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE IN THE OZARKS: THE REDISCOVERED WRITINGS, edited by Stephen W. Hines. These are short pieces she wrote earlier in her writing career for newspapers and magazines. I opened to this one, and felt inspired to share it with you.

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Success, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

( October, 1922)

    I was told to go into a certain community and get the story of the most successful person in it.

"There are no successes there," I said, "just ordinary people; not one whom has contributed to the progress of the world. I can get no story there worth anything as an inspiration to others."

    Then came the reply: "Surely someone has lived a clean life, has good friends, and the love of family. Such a one must have contributed something of good to others."

    Rearranging my standard of "success" to include something beside accumulated wealth--achieved ambition of a spectacular sort--I thought of Grandpa and Grandma Culver, poor as church mice, but a fine old couple, loved by everybody and loving everybody. Home meant something to their children who return there year after year. I went to see them.

    No," Grandma told me over the jelly she was making for the sick. "Pa and I never have been well-off in money, but, oh, so very rich in love of each other, of family, and friends.

    "We've tried to see every little submerged virtue in each other, in the children, and in everybody. I had the gift of cheerfulness; Pa had patience; we cultivated these traits.

    "Every day we have tried to be of a little use to somebody, never turning down a single opportunity to help someone to a glimpse of things worthwhile. What we have lacked in money and brilliance, we have tried to make up in service."

    But ever the world has let the flash of more dazzling successes blind it to the value of such lives as these. 

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