A Father To His Son by Carl Sandburg<\/p>\n
A father sees his son nearing manhood.
\nWhat shall he tell that son?
\n‘Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.’
\nAnd this might stand him for the storms
\nand serve him for humdrum monotony
\nand guide him among sudden betrayals
\nand tighten him for slack moments.
\n‘Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.’
\nAnd this too might serve him.
\nBrutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
\nThe growth of a frail flower in a path up
\nhas sometimes shattered and split a rock.
\nA tough will counts. So does desire.
\nSo does a rich soft wanting.
\nWithout rich wanting nothing arrives.
\nTell him too much money has killed men
\nand left them dead years before burial:
\nthe quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
\nhas twisted good enough men
\nsometimes into dry thwarted worms.
\nTell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
\nTell him to be a fool every so often
\nand to have no shame over having been a fool
\nyet learning something out of every folly
\nhoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
\nthus arriving at intimate understanding
\nof a world numbering many fools.
\nTell him to be alone often and get at himself
\nand above all tell himself no lies about himself
\nwhatever the white lies and protective fronts
\nhe may use against other people.
\nTell him solitude is creative if he is strong
\nand the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
\nTell him to be different from other people
\nif it comes natural and easy being different.
\nLet him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
\nLet him seek deep for where he is born natural.
\nThen he may understand Shakespeare
\nand the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
\nMichael Faraday and free imaginations
\nBringing changes into a world resenting change.
\nHe will be lonely enough
\nto have time for the work
\nhe knows as his own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Father To His Son by Carl Sandburg A father sees his son nearing manhood. What shall he tell that son? ‘Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.’ And this might stand him for the storms and serve him for humdrum monotony and guide him among sudden betrayals and tighten him for slack moments. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruralpearl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruralpearl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruralpearl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruralpearl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruralpearl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ruralpearl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruralpearl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruralpearl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruralpearl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}