Last Updated on December 18, 2025 by Brian Beck
My Dear Grandson,
I take pen in hand with a tenderness that surprises an old man, for though my hair has turned to snow and my joints speak plainly of the passing years, my heart is still stirred when I think of you—so young, so earnest, and so given to strong notions about the world and the right way to live in it.
Your father tells me you have taken to speaking fondly of “the old days,” as if the past were a clean and noble country, untroubled by the confusions and complaints of the present. You are not alone in this. Many a fine young man has stood at the edge of his own time and looked backward with a kind of yearning, as though yesterday carried a purer air than today. I do not scold you for it. There is something wholesome in a spirit that seeks simplicity, and there is courage in one who wishes to live with intention rather than drift with the tide.
But I write to you for a particular purpose: to tell you, plainly and with affection, that there is no romance in living as we lived—none at all—and that suffering, when it is merely chosen for its own sake, is not virtue, but vanity dressed in rough cloth.
You have never smelled the inside of a winter cabin when the wood has been wet for three days and the smoke refuses to rise. You have never lain awake listening to a child cough in the dark, counting the hours until morning with no physician within reach, no medicine at hand but bitter herbs and prayer. You have never carried water in pails so often that the hands become cracked and bleeding, nor worn boots until the soles are thin as paper, praying your heel will endure one more mile of frozen road.
I do not speak in figures. I speak in memories.
In my youth, there were days when the whole of one’s strength was spent on tasks that produced nothing to admire—only the privilege of beginning again tomorrow. Washing was not a pleasant domestic ritual; it was a campaign. Food was not a matter of taste and preference; it was a matter of survival and providence. Light was not a switch on the wall; it was a fragile flame, guarded as though it were a living creature. Warmth was not an assured companion; it was a bargain made with labor and time.
And cleanliness—ah, cleanliness! You have no notion what it means to live without it, not truly. Do you think the past smelled like cedar and old books? It smelled of damp wool, unwashed bodies, manure, smoke, and sickness. It smelled of “making do.” It smelled of fatigue.
You may say, “Grandfather, that made men strong.”
It made some men strong, yes—strong as a fence post is strong, standing in the wind because it has no choice. But it broke others. It wore down the gentle. It aged the young. It took the finest hands and turned them into tools too coarse for tenderness. Strength that is forced upon a man by circumstance is not the same as strength he chooses with wisdom.
Hear me: I do not praise the softness of the age, nor do I worship the machine as though it were a god. A man may live in a comfortable world and still become weak, selfish, and foolish; of that there is no doubt. I have seen it even in my later years, as rail lines grew and towns swelled and the pace of life changed like a river in flood.
But neither do I condemn comfort merely because it is comfort.
There are conveniences now—marvels, really—that men treat as though they were owed by nature. A turn of a handle and water appears. A lamp is made bright without wick or oil. A home is warmed without a man rising in the night to feed the fire. Food may be stored without salting and praying it does not spoil. Illness meets knowledge faster than it meets the grave. A message may travel in minutes where once it took days, and a journey that once demanded endurance and risk is now undertaken with ordinary confidence.
Some would sneer and say this has stolen the nobility from life.
My boy, nobility is not found in hauling water. Nobility is not found in losing children to fevers. Nobility is not found in toothaches that last a week because no one can afford a man to pull the tooth. Nobility is not found in exhaustion that makes a father short-tempered, or a mother silent, or a young man too tired to dream.
Nobility is found in how a man uses his days—whether they are hard or easy.
If the modern world has given you a gift, it is not the gift of laziness; it is the gift of margin. You have hours that are not immediately swallowed by survival. You may spend your strength on higher labors: on learning, on craft, on building, on service, on beauty, on the care of those you love.
It is a strange thing, but true: ease does not destroy the soul; it merely reveals it.
When life is hard in the simplest ways, a man can tell himself that his virtue consists in enduring. He can point to the blisters and the cold and say, “See how good I am—see how much I suffer.” But when the world gives him comfort, he is stripped of that excuse, and what remains is character. Does he become grateful? Does he become generous? Does he become disciplined with his freedom? Or does he become entitled and dull, drunk on ease, complaining over trifles because he has never been acquainted with necessity?
So I plead with you, as one who has lived long enough to love truth more than sentiment:
Do not lose your soul.
Do not mistake convenience for meaning, nor speed for purpose. Do not trade your attention for noise, or your integrity for applause, or your peace for a hundred small diversions that leave you empty.
But neither—listen to me carefully—neither should you chase hardship as though it were holiness.
There is no glory in suffering for suffering’s sake.
If you wish to train your strength, do so. Rise early. Work honestly. Keep your word. Learn a skill until your hands obey your mind without argument. Give yourself to responsibilities that matter, not because they are painful, but because they are right. Put away excess. Resist indulgence. Practice gratitude as a discipline, not a mood.
And when you enjoy the comforts of your day—warmth, light, clean water, swift help in illness—do not apologize for them as though enjoying them were a moral failure. Instead, honor them. Be thankful. And let that thankfulness move you to use your spared time to become a better man than my generation could easily afford to be.
For there is this to be said, and I say it without bitterness: much of what we call “the old virtue” was simply the habit of those who were too tired to be anything else. We were not saints; we were survivors. We did not endure because it was glorious; we endured because there was no alternative.
You, my grandson, have alternatives.
And that is the very point.
The modern world has placed in your hand a power that my father never dreamed of: the power to choose your suffering. To choose your discipline. To choose your duty. To choose your values.
Choose wisely.
And when you are tempted to gaze backward and imagine nobility where there was only necessity, remember this old man’s words. The past deserves respect, yes—but it does not deserve worship. We may learn from it without pretending it was a paradise.
Look forward, my boy—not with arrogance, but with gratitude. Take what is good in your day, refuse what is rotten, and build something worthy. Let comfort become not an excuse for softness, but a foundation for greatness.
I remain,
Your affectionate Grandfather,
who has carried water enough for two lifetimes
and would rather see you carry purpose.
