Lessons from The Little Virtues

"I shall take my children in hand and overcome the temptation to let my life go to pieces. I shall become serious and motherly, as always happens when I am with them."

—Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues

I don't think I ever have an all-time favorite book. I tend to have different sets of favorite books for certain seasons of my life. For the last five years or so, I have been reading books about philosophy, essays, and memoirs.

If I had to choose one book that stood out the most for the past months, it would be The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg.

The Little Virtues is a collection of essays written between 1944 and 1962. It is Ginzburg's intimate observations on life including her time in exile during World War II and introspective pieces on writing and parenting.

As a mother and a writer, this book spoke to me as if she and I were living the same life. There were times when I needed to put the book down because if I didn’t, I would be bawling my eyes out in public.

Ginzburg's prose is plain yet entrancing. Her choice of words is so pure and simple yet she manages to make it seem like she is singing.

I have highlighted so many lines in the book that choosing one favorite line would be just as hard as choosing one favorite book.

But one of the most unforgettable parts of this book was the way she compressed different inexplicable struggles of a writer into one sentence:

"I wanted to write as much as ever, it was just that I could not understand why my days had suddenly become so barren and empty of words."

And on the next pages, she continued:

"I carried a burden of embalmed objects around inside of me − silent faces and ashen words, places and voices and gestures that were a dead weight on my heart, that had no flicker of life in them."

I read this when I felt like I had nothing to offer to the world, when I felt my days were becoming so barren and empty of words. Knowing that at some point, there was someone who felt exactly how I felt allowed me to give shape and meaning to something so abstract, to something I thought was an isolated case.

Of course, I can’t talk about this book without talking about the last essay on this book which is where the title is derived from, The Little Virtues.

Ginzburg wrote about what we have been teaching our children and what we should teach them instead which I think every parent should pay attention to:

"As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one’s neighbour and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know."

She also wrote about our parents and their authoritarian tendencies. She seems to appeal to break this generational trauma that has been passed along for generations and generations which is quite surprising considering the time this was written in.

She describes our relationship with our parents and how a dialogue was always impossible:

"...a dialogue was impossible because as soon as they suspected that they were wrong they ordered us to be quiet: they beat their fists on the table and made the room shake. We remember that gesture but we cannot copy it. We can fly into a rage and howl like wolves, but deep in our wolf's howl there lies a hysterical sob, the hoarse bleating of a lamb."

I don't know about other parents but I know that deep within my howl, there lies the hoarse bleating of a lamb. I am too aware of my own imperfections and I know that if I don’t communicate this to my child, he will grow up thinking I’m sort of a superhero who can do anything at will.

Children must realize that adults don't have their lives together so that they won’t grow up thinking it was their fault we lashed out when they couldn’t independently do their homework. They must realize that raising our voices doesn’t mean we hate them but rather the effect of our inability to manage our own emotions. They must know that our frustrations are fueled by obligations we can barely keep up with so that they don’t grow up beating themselves up for failures and setbacks that are supposed to be completely normal.

Ginzburg also tells us that we should make it clear to our children that this world is not a paradise. Should our children suffer from injustice, it is our job to let them see this as reality while also emphasizing the importance of not carrying out injustices ourselves:

"And if he suffers from injustice there or is misunderstood it is necessary to let him see that there is nothing strange about this, because in life we have to expect to be constantly misunderstood and misinterpreted, and to be victims of injustices; and the only thing that matters is that we do not commit injustices ourselves."

There are two necessary things that I learned from this book not only for parenting my child but also for re-parenting myself.

The first one is to rebuild human relationships through small kindnesses. The other one is something that I constantly remind my child (which also serves as a reminder to myself) to learn how to sit with frustrations and pain.

And how do we do that? By letting go of the idea of a final comfort. The world is imperfect and pain will always be our companion so might as well get comfortable with uncomfortable situations.