“There,- my blessing with thee! (Laying his hand on Laertes' head) And these few precepts in thy memory see thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue... Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar... Beware of entrance to a quarrel... Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice... Neither a borrower or a lender be...This above all,- to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell: my blessing season this in thee! " (William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, 'Hamlet: Act I Scene III,' 675-676).
My first post on how the humanities impact our lives on a daily basis, and I begin on a tender note. As Polonius lays his hands on his son's, Laertes, head, he gives him a father's blessing. Whether Shakespeare borrowed this from the blessings of his day or not, it is a beautiful and important blessing. I only included a few of the lines for the purpose of being brief, but even a simple version includes one-liners full of wisdom. An example of this: "Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice." If more people lived by this statement, there would be a lot less quarreling and misunderstandings. Why doesn't every father give their sons and daughters a father's blessing today? Why did it stop? Well, it didn't. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, all worthy priesthood holding men have the privilege to bless their children at anytime, not only with the hopes and righteous desires they have for their children, but most importantly with the gifts and blessings from the Father of us all. Everyone deserves a father's blessing, even if sometimes it is from another man who can stand in as a surrogate.
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