Do You KNOW More than You THINCK?

The pursuit of truth

Your last letter was a beauty as far as its length but it was vilely spelt.
I don’t think I have ever seen quite so many mistakes in so few lines.
Howe wood you lick it if I rote you a leter al ful of mispeld wurds?
I no yu know kwite well howe to spel onli yu wonte taik the trubble to thinck!

If you had Rudyard Kipling as a father, this is the kind of thing you could expect, along with well-told stories and frequent exhortations to restraint and stiff upper lipism. This passage is reportedly taken from a letter that Kipling wrote to his son John in 1908, when the boy was ten and away at boarding school.

Rudyard’s reply hits the nail on the head. John has both knowledge and the ability to think. So, why so many mispeld wurds? He ‘wonte taik the trubble to thinck’. Making a proper cup of tea requires time and effort that ends up being totally worth it. Same with thinking.

What good is our knowledge if our failure to think renders that knowledge useless?

In honor of Rudyard and John, I’ll sip some Darjeeling and thinck about those wurds.

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