The Sweet, Simple Things

“I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder, “A Bouquet of Wild Flowers,” Missouri Ruralist (July 20, 1917)

Years before the Little House books, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote a farm column for the Missouri Ruralist. In the summer of 1917 she wrote about a bunch of wildflowers she’d picked, and how they took her straight back to being a barefoot little girl. Then she landed on this line.

Notice the word “beginning.” She was 50 when she wrote it. She’d lived through blizzards, crop failures, debt, and a house fire. She wasn’t handing down wisdom from a mountaintop. She was admitting she was still learning it, the same as the rest of us.

In the same column she said we heap up things we do not need “as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.” Then she named what she thought actually mattered: love and duty, work and rest, and living close to nature. None of that costs much. All of it is easy to rush past.

That’s the catch with simple things. They don’t ask for your attention. A good cup of coffee, a walk at dusk, a kid telling you a long story about nothing. They just happen, and if you’re busy chasing the next shiny pebble, they happen without you.

How to live it this week

Pick your own bouquet. Each evening, write down one small thing from the day that was genuinely good. Not a win or a purchase. A smell, a meal, a laugh, the light in the kitchen. One line is plenty.

Go outside on purpose once. Wilder’s line came from a handful of wildflowers. Take a short walk with no podcast and no errand attached. Bring something home if you like: a leaf, a stick, a few wildflowers for a jar on the table.

Do one ordinary thing slowly. Cook a meal from scratch, eat it sitting down, and leave the phone in another room. See how much more of it you actually taste.

Read your list on Sunday. Seven small things, none of them bought. That’s the real stuff she was talking about, and you had it all week.

You don’t have to have it all figured out. Beginning to learn is enough.

Want more lines like this? Read Anne Morrow Lindbergh on why a few shells are more beautiful, try 20 slow living quotes to slow down and savor the day, or browse the full list of simple living quotes.