Everything I needed to know about Psychology, I could have learned from Little House on the Prairie.

I’ve been reading articles written by Laura Ingalls Widler in the years before she was the famous author of the Little House books.   I’m beginning to feel like Anne of the “Green Gables” in that here is a woman who thinks like I think, feels like I feel, and hopes like I hope.  In a phrase “A kindred spirit.”    Who knew I could feel so connected to someone writing in the early 1900’s.  She is forthright, not afraid to be a woman and not afraid of man’s heavy labor if called upon to do it.  She appears to be a bit of a feminist but not so far gone as to be annoying.   

I love how she sees the good in people.  Also like her,  I do not like being beholden to someone.  When she talks about how strangers came to a barn raising (Rocky Ridge Farm) she did not know how she was to pay them back. She inevitably accepted the help but in her heart she was dismayed at having to!  I so get that.  But in a similar turn of her heart she realizes this is just how it is in this community and she accepts and eventually embraces the way this community functions.

One article was devoted to understanding.  Long before I ever went to college and learned about Jung and paradigm shifts... Laura Ingalls had it all worked out.   In this article she expounds our need as humans to seek understanding. How when we do not understand what is going on. We can fall into gossip about our neighbor.  To us they look as if they are doing nothing! Or to us they look like they are being too hard on the child. When in reality, what our understanding is,  is nothing near the truth of the matter.  

She uses an example and shows outside looking in and inside looking out.  The motivation and reasons behind the actions were innocent and pure. Yet from the outside it looked harsh and unreasonable. Then she talks about how once we understood the reasoning behind the action we no longer though as we once did.  What I learned in college as the Paradigm Shift. 

I love how she reminds us to mind our own beeswax, and think the best in people, not assume the worst, and above all to not gossip.